Experian 41 point drop when lowering CC utilization

[Anonymous]

Hello,

this morning I receieved an alert that my experian fico 8 score dropped 41 points, and the fico alert said that it was due to decreasing my credit card utilization from 17% to 5%. Anyone else experience this before? I went out to the experian site and downloaded a credit report, and it says the same thing.

[medicgrrl]

The alert is triggered by what the statement says but isn't necessarily the reason for score changes.  Go thru your report carefully and find the difference between the two.  There's something else that has triggered the score drop.  Sounds more likely to be a negative account.  This is a FICO score, correct?

[DollyLama]

Did you pay off an installment loan within the last 2 months? Only have credit cards reporting?  Did you go on any app sprees for new credit ? Close any accounts? Or old accounts that were keeping your credit history age and average age higher get dropped?

[Anonymous]

This is a fico score, yes. I'm guessing this was triggered by late payment reporting rather than the utilization change.

I'm looking at the overview from experian, it says

Late Payments: 2

Time Since Late: 1 Month.

Equifax and and Transunion are saying  

Late Payments: 2

Time Since Late: 2.8 years.

I have two negative accounts on my credit report that have been showing lates for each month that is reported in the account's payment history for the last few years. This is true for all 3 credit agencies, but I am unsure why experian would just now say my most recent late payment was last month. Could this change if an account status went from open to closed, thats the only difference I see. There aren't any other accounts that have a missed payment on them, or any new accounts with a new missed payment on it.

[Anonymous]

Experian recently dropped my FICO score 15 pts when I paid off a store credit card that had a balance under $300.  My other cards still have balances and utilization is close to 70%, so it's not due to no utilization.  Frustrating when you feel you are trying to get ahead and then they drop your score on you for no obvious reasons.  41 points is a huge drop.  

[medicgrrl]

Changing the status from open to closed won't do it.  Check the comments under each account status also.  My sister has a lower score on 1 report and we couldn't find a late payment listed under the payment history, then we found one of the statuses said something like "Account paid, current was 30" and that appears to be what triggered hers.  Check any unpaid derog accounts to see if one of them just updated.  If you have any that weren't reporting and just updated, that will trigger FICO to read it as a "current late"

[DollyLama]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

This is a fico score, yes. I'm guessing this was triggered by late payment reporting rather than the utilization change.

I'm looking at the overview from experian, it says

Late Payments: 2

Time Since Late: 1 Month.

Equifax and and Transunion are saying  

Late Payments: 2

Time Since Late: 2.8 years.

I have two negative accounts on my credit report that have been showing lates for each month that is reported in the account's payment history for the last few years. This is true for all 3 credit agencies, but I am unsure why experian would just now say my most recent late payment was last month. Could this change if an account status went from open to closed, thats the only difference I see. There aren't any other accounts that have a missed payment on them, or any new accounts with a new missed payment on it.

---

What type of account closed? If credit card did it close with a balance? If yes, then you will continually be 100% utilization on that one card until it is paid off. When you stated utilization went 17-5, is that overall utilization on all revolving accounts or just that one card? 

The late you have reporting, stating 1 month, is it a collection that just started to report monthly? Some don't update for months, perhaps years, until they see you are trying to get credit, or it was sold to another agency, that will continue to report monthly from now until paid in full. 

[Anonymous]

The late payment definitely could have caused your score to drop.