@theonlyway wrote:I utilize equifax monitoring also and disputed a balance on my report. Myfico sent me a message saying my score had changed so I logged in and saw my fico score dropped 22 points for disputing an incorrect balance. What is going on? It seems to me that myfico is a poor service. Equifax never dropped my score and my score is higher via equifax direct from the source. The difference was 30 point difference and is now a 50 point difference (from my fico to equifax). Pretty disappointed with this service thus far.
Disputes can remove the tradeline from scoring calculation among other things. All bets are off if you file a dispute is what it boils down to.
I found personally disputing a balance that the lender has 30 days to fix the issue, which is basically a monthly reporting time anyway. Doesn't generally make sense to dispute balance issues I found as a rsult, didn't really get what I wanted and stuck the dispute flag on my reports which was suboptimal for me at the time.
@theonlyway wrote:It may not make sense to you but that exact move was what helped boost my score 200 points in a year. Disputing the balance should have no negative affect on score unless the balance goes up. With my balance being less, shouldn't negatively reflect on my score. Why did it not lower my score on equifax?
Couldn't tell you but disputes do wierd things on FICO 04 too which assuming you're on Equifax Scorewatch, they use. If you're on the educational score monitoring which I think they still offer, I don't know. Disputes are a mixed bag.
Anyway a dispute can whack the tradeline from calculation: it follows from all the anecdotal information here, that if you have a clean tradeline other than the balance, and if that balance isn't really hurting you in the scorecards, then you will take a drop statistically (may be zero, mine was) much like people who dispute negatives often see a boost to their scores temporarily.
Not going to get into benefits of monitoring solutions, everyone should do their own value calculation in that, but the FICO scores will go sideways when there are disputes on the report and that should be expected when making a dispute. It's why mortgage lenders demand no tradelines be in dispute status to underwrite a loan (heck they won't even allow the dispute comments though that's a software defect in my opinion).