I am in a similar situation as you. I was carrying about $22,000 in credit card debt. Around 80% util. I was able to pay nearly all of them off last month. My score has climbed a little over a 100 pts on EX and EQ and aout 80 pts on TU.
I found they climbed SLOW. I know when each credit card reports and watched for the payments to hit and than the report to update. MyFICO is about a week late in notifying me when a card has been updated. Each pay off helped a little. I had 15 cards reporting balances and now I am at 2 with high balances that should update this week. The other thing I noticed - I paid off in full but they charged residue interest - so all my cards still reported with balances of $7 to $20. So I am still at about 13 cards reporting with balances but they are all small balances. I have gone back and paid those off. I am kinda in limbo. I need the two from this week to update than I will need to wait until the first week in May for the other ones with the residue interest to report zero. Not sure what I am expecting to happen.
My scores went from low 600's to 728, 688 and 721.
