Keep losing points. Don't understand.

[Anonymous]

PS.  Your plan to have two of your cards (Express + another) reporting a balance is fine.  The way you talk about your cards, it sounds like you have several.  If you do have many cards, then FICO would likely consider 2 cards as the same as 1 card in terms of the "number of cards reporting a balance" factor.  (What FICO probably does is it looks at the percentage of cards showing a balance.  If somebody has 9 cards, for example, then 1 or 2 cards showing a balance are both < 25% of your total number.  But if a person only had 3 cards total, then there is a big difference between 1 vs. 2.

[Thomas_Thumb]

Hello CGID:

Charge cards tagged as charge cards do not factor into individual or aggregate utilization.

However and unfortunately for me, all three CRAs have tagged my bona fide AMEX green charge card as a credit card. The high balance associated with this NPSL card IS included in my total CL for all 3 CRAs based on a 3B report from Equifax last November. Perhaps I should work with AMEX to get that changed. Wonder if I can just scan a statement & email it with a cover letter to the CRAs?

BTW - I was looking at putting $10k on it for a car downpayment to boost the listed HB seven fold. AMEX already said no problem. I wonder how a 700% utilization would affect various Fico scores?

P.S. My closed Kohls is listed as a charge card. If the OPs Express card is indeed tagged as a charge card then yes, balance may not factored into utilization.

I can loan type on MyFico 3B but, the report lacks the account summary details available on the EQ 3B

*** Moderator***  please pass along a request to the Fico folks to include an account summary such as shown below

From 11/2015 EQ 3B

Note of advice - Check your report details.

Per the above "blued out areas" I was able to determine EQ was including all CCs in my total CL but, TU was missing my BB CL and EX was missing my FIA Visa card CL Why the difference in card count and CL? TU is showing my BB open card as closed and although EX shows my FIA Visa card as open, my #B summary under last activity for this card said "not available" so I think it was tagged as inactive. Thus, my belief that CL associated with open but inactive cards may not be included in aggregate CL.

Fron 2/2016 MyFico 3B

[My_Fako]

I have 12 cards. 

7 Mayjor

5 Store

[Anonymous]

Yup, my guess was that you had a bunch of cards.  One of the FICO scoring factors does indeed reward you for having a bunch of zero balances reporting on your cards.  But in your case, having 1 out of 12 showing a positive balance won't help you any more than 2 out of 12.

So your idea of having two cards showing a balance is a good one, just so you can be positive that one of them is being classified as a credit card.