CAs Reporting WRONG # of Months Reviewed On Oldest CC Accounts...

[RSCo]

So I have been questioning why my credit score seems to be stuck, and in fact dropping, when I only have 1 negative mark on my credit report that will soon drop off in June. It's 6yrs 10mths old.. 

I have approx 69k in revolving credit lines and am only 13% utilized across all of my 15 open accounts, 20 closed accounts.. My avg AAOA is 8yrs.. But yet my Fico is stuck at 674...  In fact, it just dropped from 713 AFTER I had a 2010 Federal Tax Lien AND a 2007 Judgment DELETED from my credit report.. My score literally dropped from 713 to 674 the VERY day AFTER these 2 negs were deleted.. Again, I only have 1 neg left..

So I've been searching for reasons and I think I found one particular thing that stands out.. On many of my oldest accounts, some over 8 and in one case, 13 years old, where Equifax is reporting a completely wrong number under the Months Reviewed section.

Example, I have a credit card that I opened and have been using monthly since 2000.. That's 13 years, but yet Equifax is reporting months reviewed as 31.. I cut and paste the value below from my report.

NWFCU Credit Card, Opened Oct 2000 - Months Reviewed:31

Citi Credit Card, Opened Nov 2001 - Months Reviewed:26

PNC Mortgage, Opened July 1997, Paid Off Nov 2003 - Months Reviewed:18  ( and Equifax even lists this old and paid off mortgage as an installment loan, and not a Mortgage. I've called them a number of times to report it does not have the correct type associated to it, and they says it's fine. But yet one of my negatives that is always listed on my credit report score summaries is that I've not had a mortgage account before, I've had 4 different ones since 1997..

So, it seems to me EQ is simply messed up.. Has anyone else seen this incorrect Months Reviewed issue?  It must be pulling down my AAOA...

[webhopper]

Is this information coming from myfico? what are the reasons given for your score? Any baddies remaining? The reason your score dropped could very well be rebucketing into a bucket of folks who don't have a tax lein or judgment.

[RSCo]

I'm not sure MyFico shows the Months Reviewed data, but If it does, I may have missed it on MyFico.. This is coming directly from the Equifax site.. I only have one baddie that will age off in June.. It's 6yrs 10ths old now.. All of these accts that show incorrect Months Reviewed data are used every single month and have been since I opened them.. All of my newer accounts all show correct info..

Thanks for the info..

[llecs]

OP, "months reviewed" isn't used in FICO scoring. The only date that matters to AAoA is the date opened.

[dpittsmd1985]

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@RSCo wrote:

So I have been questioning why my credit score seems to be stuck, and in fact dropping, when I only have 1 negative mark on my credit report that will soon drop off in June. It's 6yrs 10mths old.. 

I have approx 69k in revolving credit lines and am only 13% utilized across all of my 15 open accounts, 20 closed accounts.. My avg AAOA is 8yrs.. But yet my Fico is stuck at 674...  In fact, it just dropped from 713 AFTER I had a 2010 Federal Tax Lien AND a 2007 Judgment DELETED from my credit report.. My score literally dropped from 713 to 674 the VERY day AFTER these 2 negs were deleted.. Again, I only have 1 neg left..

So I've been searching for reasons and I think I found one particular thing that stands out.. On many of my oldest accounts, some over 8 and in one case, 13 years old, where Equifax is reporting a completely wrong number under the Months Reviewed section.

Example, I have a credit card that I opened and have been using monthly since 2000.. That's 13 years, but yet Equifax is reporting months reviewed as 31.. I cut and paste the value below from my report.

NWFCU Credit Card, Opened Oct 2000 - Months Reviewed:31

Citi Credit Card, Opened Nov 2001 - Months Reviewed:26

PNC Mortgage, Opened July 1997, Paid Off Nov 2003 - Months Reviewed:18  ( and Equifax even lists this old and paid off mortgage as an installment loan, and not a Mortgage. I've called them a number of times to report it does not have the correct type associated to it, and they says it's fine. But yet one of my negatives that is always listed on my credit report score summaries is that I've not had a mortgage account before, I've had 4 different ones since 1997..

So, it seems to me EQ is simply messed up.. Has anyone else seen this incorrect Months Reviewed issue?  It must be pulling down my AAOA...

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That's interesting because I just had TU and XPN totally delete the Federal Tax Liens that were on my CRs and my TU FICO dropped 24 points! This is in spite of the fact that my utilization ratio dropped from 28% in Feb (when TU score was 694) to 4% this month, no HPs or no other lates than what was previously reporting. I have not seen any change in the months reporting.  I am confused and frustrated.   

[dddewdrop]

    I would say you have definately been rebucketed because your public records have been deleted. Fico has what are sometimes called scorecards and they categorize people in different ways. Before you were most likely categorized as a person with a lien. Now you are not. You may have been before been in the top group of people with a lien for credit. Now with no public records or judgements you are in a different group. Some call it rebucketing and it is a possibility if you can't seem to find any other reason for your score dropping like that.

Edited to credit webhopper. I just read the post a few ahead of mine. I concur

[AndySoCal]

Is the number of months reviewed matching the number of months of payment history being reported.? Along the same lines most likely the number of months reviewed  will noy be higher than 84 months ( the longest payment histroy that can be reported).   A mortage is an installment loan on the credit report you should see installment then in the loan type field you should see what type of loan it is a mortgage.  On your MYFICO credit report look at the section where it shows the factors that affecting your score negatively. If you can try to address those reasons.

[Bug101]

What is rebucketing?

[Bug101]

I think I found the answer two posts up, AFTER I posted this question.

But this does raise another question.

We have a Tax Lein, which was paid over 1.5 years ago but IRS has not reported it as paid. Other than this we had NO credit until we bought a car in March of 2012.  We were planning to pay cash as we have been for about 8 years because we never wanted credit again.  We went down that road and made bad decisions.

Well When we decided to buy a more expensive car which we could not pay cash for we found out that our credit score was ZERO.  We had the lein and one old account in good standing making it for the car loan zero.

The New car dealer who was AWESOME, not only got us approved for Zero percent interest but $1250 cash back.  It did help  alot that we put down 30%.  I planned to pay it off within 6 months and he stringly advised me NOT to for at LEAST 2 years so it would establish us credit and seeing we were not paying interest his advice turned out to be excelent all the way around.

So here is the thing.  I plan to try and get the IRS to remove the lein, which by the way I can prove we NEVER owed the 14K we PAID.  I do not expect t be able to get the 14K back but figured they can aleast remove the lein.  But after reading some of these things on here I wonder if it will actually hurt rather than help.

We are planning to buy a house in the Spring.  One lender who did approve us already in June (4.25% interest) suggested we take out a credit card to help build more credit, which we did.  It is small and that is how we want to keep it and is paid off each month.  I actually hate even having it, I hate still owing on the car even at interest free but it seems to be a nessisary evil at this point.  Oh we have been receiving several CC offer in the last two + months which go right into the shredder.

Our bank just sent us a EQ FICO score and it was 672, our average score in June was 636.  Not sure what the others are reporting at the moment now.  I do not want to spend $40 just to see when it does not matter at this moment and will probably change again when it will matter and have to pay again.

So to recap my question.  Should I spend the effort to have the lein removed, which will probablly get us REBUCKETED and probably lower our score?  We do not have enough credit points right now to lose points.  We can prove the lein was paid (and that we never owed it, which will mean nothing to the IRS).

The only debt we have is the car loan and student loans which are in good standing but we do owe 58K on them but are not showing on our credit.

I figured by having the lein removed it should make our score go up at least 75-100 points by at lest March when the car note turns 2 years old seeing we have NO other negs.

I appreciate any info and advice.

Thanks.

[llecs]

For your latter post, I would take steps to get it resolved now. Even if paid, but reporting as unpaid, it can be a problem for you when you apply for your mortgage. Your lender will require you to jump through a lot of hoops at the last second to prove that it was paid off.

On rebucketing, FICO is more than just a 3-digit number. The FICO formula isn't linear. In other words, you don't lose a fixed set of points when a lien is added, a collection added, etc. It varies from person to person. Some in here could lose 100+ when a lien gets added. Others in here might not see any score change when a lien is added. That's all because everyone's credit is not the same. Because of that, the FICO formula is broken down into scoring buckets. There are at least a dozen of them, and a little more than that on newer FICo versions.

FICO created the formula so that everyone's score is dependent on everyone else. Ever have a teacher or college professor grade on a bell curve? It's just like that. If everyone takes the same test and does poorly, with the highest grade at 80%, then that person effectively got an "A" with everyone else lining up behind him/her. Like with a grade, if the economy tanks and everyone does poorly, then the damage to your FICO isn't as bad because veryone else didn't do as well. Make sense? This way you are not being directly compared to someone with a perfect history, or compared directly to someone with a 30+ year credit history. Everyone is broken into a specific scoring bucket and your score responds on the same level as everyone else within that bucket. 

There's a specific scoring bucket for those with liens, judgments, and other similar derogs. As that lien disappears, then that will move you into a new scoring bucket. You'll certainly gain with the removal of the lien, but that gain can be offset, partially, because the other items on your credit will then be scored much differently (e.g. derogs like lates or collections will be scored a bit harsher, or FICO will weigh your CC utilization a bit more, or weigh your credit history differently, etc.). That's why you see some people who have lien removals report a FICO loss. Some experience no change. And others see a FICO increase. More than likely you'd see a gain from my guess anyway, based on what you posted.