Huge 39 point Fico increase on Equifax after closing store card!

[Anonymous]

(Not sure if this shoudl be in the Fico Scoring or Credit Cards forum?)

Wow! My Equifax jumped up 39 points and Experian 9 (largest increase for Experian to date) after closing a Brylane CC that I've only had for less than a month.

I was going to purchase something on sale and they offered me a CC at check out. At first I thought sure, why not? And accepted the offer. But the CL was only $300 and the item I wanted would have put me over 30% so I used my CitiCard instead. I called a few days later and asked if the card was active and reported to a CRA and yes, it was. So I closed it and they said if I wrote to their finance department I might be able to get it removed from the CRA's.

The letter was on my to do list for this weekend. So imagine my surprise when I logged into MyFico tonight and my scores had jumped that much! I guess I'll leave the card on the reports

Anyone else experience something like this? I'd love some feedback as to why this happened.

[Anonymous]

Very interesting, is this your first/only store card?

if you look at your "ingredients" on the score page, what does your credit mix say?  Did it change?

[manyquestions]

It does seem odd that it would have that much of an impact.  Do you have a really thin credit file?  I'd get new copies of your reports to check if anything else looks different.

[Anonymous]

I have 4 store cards, 5 credit cards, auto loan, personal, student loan. So my mix is good. 

I'm going to try to take a screen shot of the alert with the jump. (If I can't, I'll just report what it says). 

[Anonymous]

Okay, for the life of me, I can't figure out how to get the pic in this post.

This is what it says:

Alerts

• 11/6/2015 EquifaxA new account has been added to your credit report
  FICO® SCORE CHANGE

(Shows new score, 696 with green arrow up, 39 pts)

COMENITY BANK/BRYLNHME

• BALANCE
• $0

• PAST DUE
• Not Reported

• STATUS
• Pays Account As Agreed

• PORTFOLIO TYPE
• Revolving Or Option

• DESCRIPTION
• Account Closed At Consumer's Request Charge

• PAYMENT TERMS
• Not Reported

• FIRST REPORTED
• 10/01/2015

Experian increased my score by 9 today with the same alert. I'm just flabergasted at Equifax, hope it's not a fluke!!!

[NRB525]

It seems very odd to have such a large increase on what amounts to a new account. So odd that it seems quite unlikely.

Since your scores were well below 700, what baddies do you have in your file? Did something drop off?

[Thomas_Thumb]

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@Anonymous wrote:

(Not sure if this shoudl be in the Fico Scoring or Credit Cards forum?)

Wow! My Equifax jumped up 39 points and Experian 9 (largest increase for Experian to date) after closing a Brylane CC that I've only had for less than a month.

I was going to purchase something on sale and they offered me a CC at check out. At first I thought sure, why not? And accepted the offer. But the CL was only $300 and the item I wanted would have put me over 30% so I used my CitiCard instead. I called a few days later and asked if the card was active and reported to a CRA and yes, it was. So I closed it and they said if I wrote to their finance department I might be able to get it removed from the CRA's.

The letter was on my to do list for this weekend. So imagine my surprise when I logged into MyFico tonight and my scores had jumped that much! I guess I'll leave the card on the reports

Anyone else experience something like this? I'd love some feedback as to why this happened.

---

If the card was unused and removed, perhaps the associated hard inquiry was removed as well. That could improve score.

A couple other things that should improve: are your AAoA will go up and your age of youngest account will go back up. AAoA is a factor in scoring and age of youngest account is considered in scorecard assignment.

A last potential potential factor is- average credit card limit. Dropping a low limit store card will increase your average CL. I know that is a factor with EX PLUS score, TU Home/Auto credit based insurance scores and LexisNexis credit based insurance scores. However, not sure if average CL comes into play with Fico or VS scoring models.

 * EX PLUS thresholds are: a) less than $5000, b) $5000 and above

* TU insurance has the following: a) less than $3000, b) $3000 to $8999, c) $9000 and above

* LexisNexis has the following thresholds for average CL

3030 - $725 or Less, 3031 - $726 to $1,024, 3032 - $1,025 to $2,075, 3033 - $2,076 to $3,109, 3034 - $3,110 to $4,778,

3035 -$4,779 to $5,773, 3036 - $5,774 to $6,175, 3037 - $6,176 to $7,919, 3038 - $7,920 to $10,532,

[Anonymous]

I agree, it seems crazy to me too. I do have one paid collection from 2012 (orginal AT&T, $120, paid through Enhanced Recovery) that I am disputing. Is it possible that the dispute could generate the score increase? I checked with EQ and the dispute is still in process. My 3B doesn't generate new reports until January.

Does Credit Karma generate an EQ report, or only TU?

[Anonymous]

Thomas_Thumb, I checked and I never had a hard inquiry on my report. Something else must be going on behind the scenes?? Off to pull my Equifax from somewhere, even if I have to pay for it 

[Thomas_Thumb]

Credit Karma does provide summary information for bot TU and EQ under factors impacting your score. Hard credit inquiries are included in the summary. CK also provides a list of accounts by type in your file and an overall credit utilizaion calculation.

Generally every new CC a person gets results in a hard inquiry - but typically only on one of the three CRAs. The other two will not get/show the inquiry.