@Shannon3671 wrote:I've been looking to get a mortgage, however, I've had to work on my credit to get my mid score (equifax) to a 620. My fico score for Equifax and the score pulled by the bank were not the same. My fico showed 589 and the bank pull showed a 603. At the advise of the broker, I payed down my credit cards. The first gave me a 6 point increase. I also got disputes removed which gave me another 7 points. I ran a new report on 06/10/14 which showed myFICO at 602. The score similator showed that when the last credit card reported the balance decrease it would bump the score another 5. Capital One reported the decrease today and I got the alert, however, it didn't change my score at all! I don't understand 2 things. 1st, why the scores are different for Equifax if this is supposed to be my true FICO (though I can't complain too much because it's showing 14points lower than what it actually is) and 2nd, why the score similator showed the decrease would bump my score 5 points, but it didn't. Thank you for your help.
Hi Shannon3671,
First congratulations on the progress you've made so far, and welcome to the forums.
To address your first question: This site uses FICO08 model of the score. Most lenders are merging into using this model. However, for mortgage purposes, lenders use FICO04 (the standardized version for mortgage applications). So with two different models, it is concivable that the scores may be different. The exact difference between the two models is really known only to.. well not us.. 
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As for the second question, the simulator is not an acurate predictor. It is an estimator, and I think it calculates it if you pay the bill over a certain time, not immediate. I could be wrong on this, but I suspect aging of the account contributes to i too.
Thank you! It's been a long road recovering from a stint of unemployment due to corporate downsizing. All delinquencies are from 2+ years ago as well as collections and all of them have been paid. Becuase of this, there is really nothing I can do, but continue to make on time payments and keep balances low. The similator actually has 2 scenarios. The first is as you mentioned, paying a certain amount monthly for a specific period of time. Another scenario that is offered is decreasing your balance of credit card debt. The last scenario is the one I used and was basing the expected bump in score from. My broker was waiting to run a new report until after the Captial One change hit, though he was surprised because according to his similator the first payoff showed a 22 point bump which didn't happen. I guess at this point all I can do is go ahead and let him run it to see if what he shows will now give me the median range required and if it does then that's great and if not...I wait. It appears, however, that this whole scoring model is finicky and I just hope that even though I continue to make positive changes it doesn't bite me in the butt by dropping for no reason as I've seen others start complaining about. 