Hi Everyone,
I just got an alert from Barclay's that my score has changed. Logged in and sure enough score went from 697 to 683. YUP - 14 point drop. So I got worried and to make sure nothing hinky is going on, I purchased the score and report from TU on here. It appears that the drop was due to ALL my cards reported a $0 balance. There is a balance on an AU account (About 10%), but that is it. This month I left about 19% report on the Barclay's card (3% total util), but it hasn't reported yet. Due date was on 8/9. Should report soon.
But it is funny, though. A while back, I posted a note about how the simulator seemed to ignore balances on AU accounts. Now I think it is confirmed that FICO 08 doesn't account for balances on AU when it comes to showing credit usage. Here is a screenshot of what changed.
Left (Carrying a balance on two cards - besides the AU account). Right (carrying no balance besides the AU account). Left shows the score of 697 while the right has a score of 683.
At least now I know not to worry about it if this jumps. But I was trying to rotate which card shows balance and it looks like the update was done just before Barclay's reported. It will report a balance of $191/$1000 so about 19% or so. Total Util is at about 3%. Just some data points. That is all.
@IamB2 wrote:Hi Everyone,
I just got an alert from Barclay's that my score has changed. Logged in and sure enough score went from 697 to 683. YUP - 14 point drop. So I got worried and to make sure nothing hinky is going on, I purchased the score and report from TU on here. It appears that the drop was due to ALL my cards reported a $0 balance. There is a balance on an AU account (About 10%), but that is it. This month I left about 19% report on the Barclay's card (3% total util), but it hasn't reported yet. Due date was on 8/9. Should report soon.
But it is funny, though. A while back, I posted a note about how the simulator seemed to ignore balances on AU accounts. Now I think it is confirmed that FICO 08 doesn't account for balances on AU when it comes to showing credit usage. Here is a screenshot of what changed.
Left (Carrying a balance on two cards - besides the AU account). Right (carrying no balance besides the AU account). Left shows the score of 697 while the right has a score of 683.
At least now I know not to worry about it if this jumps. But I was trying to rotate which card shows balance and it looks like the update was done just before Barclay's reported. It will report a balance of $191/$1000 so about 19% or so. Total Util is at about 3%. Just some data points. That is all.
Same thing happened to me when i let my amex TE, which is an au account , report. I got an 20 points ding :-) down from 807 to 784 . Once i let my BCP report again it went back up to 807, so I learned my lesson let my main cards report balances :-)
@pizzadude wrote:
@IamB2 wrote:Hi Everyone,
I just got an alert from Barclay's that my score has changed. Logged in and sure enough score went from 697 to 683. YUP - 14 point drop. So I got worried and to make sure nothing hinky is going on, I purchased the score and report from TU on here. It appears that the drop was due to ALL my cards reported a $0 balance. There is a balance on an AU account (About 10%), but that is it. This month I left about 19% report on the Barclay's card (3% total util), but it hasn't reported yet. Due date was on 8/9. Should report soon.
But it is funny, though. A while back, I posted a note about how the simulator seemed to ignore balances on AU accounts. Now I think it is confirmed that FICO 08 doesn't account for balances on AU when it comes to showing credit usage. Here is a screenshot of what changed.
Do you share the same address / family name as the primary cardholder? I think that may make a difference whether AU accounts are included...
I don't even think that matters anymore , but i could be wrong. I have an amex TE with my mom same address and same last name. When i let it report as my only account for optimal scoring, i got hit and score went down by 25 points, till one of my "main cards" reported an few weeks later. Just an data point, i know my situation isn't liek everybody else
@pizzadude wrote:
I would be very surprised if FICO08 completely disregards AU accounts; the few "official" explanations that I've seen from Fair Issac indicate they are still included however there are more advanced algorithms in place to weed out frivolous AUs. Not sure how this works in the real world though....
Yea since nobody really knows their algorithms , its hard to juded how little or how much au accounts are factored in. I learned hardway that not to rely on AU account to report for utilization purposes didn't think it would be that big of an hit :-(
