Confused on credit

Clueless1911 · ‎09-19-2011

I have been rebuilding my credit over the course of the year. I have seen some major changes in my score. I opened a Capital One secured credit card and have kept the balance below 30% on a $200 credit line( they raised my credit limit to 300 this month). I recently ran my report again to find out I had been a victim of identity fraud back in June. I had a new collection account on my credit for $759. Also my capital one card was reporting a high balance of $103 I have never used over $60 on the card.

My scores were 585/593/627. I did file a police report to have the fraudulent account removed from my credit. I pulled my credit again to see if any updates had been done since it was last ran on the 24th of August. My scores were lower. Now they are 584/590/593.

My question is could those two things have lowered my credit score so much?

MarineVietVet · ‎09-19-2011

@Clueless1911 wrote:
I have been rebuilding my credit over the course of the year. I have seen some major changes in my score. I opened a Capital One secured credit card and have kept the balance below 30% on a $200 credit line( they raised my credit limit to 300 this month). I recently ran my report again to find out I had been a victim of identity fraud back in June. I had a new collection account on my credit for $759. Also my capital one card was reporting a high balance of $103 I have never used over $60 on the card.

My scores were 585/593/627. I did file a police report to have the fraudulent account removed from my credit. I pulled my credit again to see if any updates had been done since it was last ran on the 24th of August. My scores were lower. Now they are 584/590/593.

My question is could those two things have lowered my credit score so much?

Hello and welcome.

Did you get your scores from a lender? If not then unfortunately I have to tell you that none of those scores are FICO scores. There is no 3 in 1 service that I am aware of that sells all three FICO scores.

There are many sites that will sell you "credit scores" but these scores are not based on the same scoring formulas as FICO scores and some of them (TransRisk and Plus scores come to mind) are not even used by any lenders.

No one has been able to buy their own Experian FICO score since February of 2009. Creditors can pull Experian and also there is a CU (PSECU) in Pennsylvania that supplies that information to it's members only. You can only buy true FICO scores at a few places. One place is here at myFICO.At one time you could also purchase your Transunion score at transunioncs.com but that site seems to have stopped doing that. Wal Mart now offers a TU score to those who have their store card and the Discover version.

Equifax will still sell you a FICO score but you have to look very hard to find it. You can get to it here: www.equifax.com/web-myfico-products/

So I suggest you buy at least one of your scores here to get a better baseline of where you actually stand.

You asked if a new account and a new collection can drop a score? Most definitely but by how much is different for everyone because we all have a slightly different credit profile and that profile is constantly changing. Was the collection a result of the ID theft? If so hopefully it can be taken care of pretty easily.

From a BK years ago to:
EX - 3/11 pulled by lender- 835, EQ - 2/11-816, TU - 2/11-782

"Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they've made a difference. The Marines don't have that problem".

Clueless1911 · ‎09-19-2011

Thank you for responding.

1. Yes the first set of scores listed I got from the mortgage company. The second set I pulled myself through true credit get all 3 scores at once.

2. Yes the collection account is the result of the identity fraud so hopefully that will be off quickly.

GregB · ‎09-19-2011

If you got the first set through a mortgage app they are almost certainly real FICO scores. The new scores from Truecredit will be Vantage Scores and those are likely to be way off, probably much higher than you actual "new" FICO scores.

That means the damage is probably larger than you think. Lots of damage for a new collection is what we would expect, particularly if it is you only collection.

The Truecredit account will be useful to make sure the incorrect items do come off your reports. It is only the scores that have little or no value.

MarineVietVet · ‎09-19-2011

@Clueless1911 wrote:
Thank you for responding.

1. Yes the first set of scores listed I got from the mortgage company. The second set I pulled myself through true credit get all 3 scores at once. This second set of scores from TC are called VantageScores and although a few lenders are now using the VS you simply can't compare it to FICO scores. For one thing the score range for VS is 501-990 whereas the range for FICO's is 300-850. That they are close to the lender pull scores is only by coincidence. Your FICO scores right now could be higher or lower than what you got at TC.

2. Yes the collection account is the result of the identity fraud so hopefully that will be off quickly. When that is gone you should recover quite a few points but exactly how many? I won't hazard a guess on that.

Clueless1911 · ‎09-19-2011

So it is possible that before this collection was added that my scores were higher.

MarineVietVet · ‎09-19-2011

@Clueless1911 wrote:
So it is possible that before this collection was added that my scores were higher.

That's almost a certainty. New collections are a major ding to anyone's credit.

From a BK years ago to:
EX - 3/11 pulled by lender- 835, EQ - 2/11-816, TU - 2/11-782

"Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they've made a difference. The Marines don't have that problem".