I have noticed, as have others, that EX seems to give more weight for
percent utilization, EQ more weight for total balance on revolving accounts,
and TU for number of accouts reporting a balance. My wife and I enjoy
good incomes and are heavy convenience users on multiple credit cards:
carrying very little cash, putting everything on our cards, and paying
in full at the end of the month. Our cards all have limits well above
anything we have ever put on them. My oldest account is my Amex Gold
active since 1982, I recently paid off a car loan, and the only interest
we currently pay is the mortgage. Neither of us has any baddies, when
one of us does get the occasional second notice of a bill that slipped
through the cracks we instantly pay them when getting the reminder.
In credit scoring terms, this means my PERCENT utilization is always
quite low, but all of my cards report a balance every month and the total
balance on revolving accounts bounces around quite a bit.
The result of this profile in FICO scoring terms:
EX: FICO consistently between 820 and 830, and under negative factors it
says "no factors negatively affecting your score. The last time I did
a same-day comparison of my Experian Plus FAKO score versus my Experian
FICO score, the FAKO was 812 and the FICO was 821.
EQ: fluctuates from about 790 to about 810 depending on the balances
this month, when it happens to be above 800 it says "no negative factors"
and when it happens to be under 800 it mentions "total balance on revolving
accounts is too high."
TU: consistently between 785 and 795, sometimes mentions total balance
on revolving accounts and always mentions "too many accounts showing a
balance."
I therefore conclude that, at least for people in my bucket, the relative
weights appear to be as I said above. When I next anticipate applying
for credit, I could probably maximimze all my scores by sockdrawering
all but one card for a couple months and prepaying that one card online.
The FICO Score Simulator is relatively useless for parsing out the relative
weights of these factors in my case, because when I feed it scenarios like
paying off all my balances its prediction is for the resulting scores to
range from 780 to 830, which I already know. Naturally when I ask the
simulator about the likely result of hypothetical baddies it predicts my
scores would tank -- again no surprise, obviously a single baddie will have
a major impact on a clean profile, just as a credible report of personal
misconduct by a politician with a very clean image would change my view
of that politician much more than would yet another scandal involving somebody
whose picture regularly appears in the tabloids.
TU 791 02/11/2013, EQ 800 1/29/2011 , EX Plus FAKO 812, EX Vantage Score 955 3/19/2010 wife's EQ 9/23/2009 803
EX always was my highest when we could pull all three
Always remember: big print giveth, small print taketh away
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