@elboullee wrote:Haven't exprienced anything like this before, any thoughts and ideas are appreciated.
Last week I got an email alert from Experian saying that my FICO8 score had dropped 35 points - from a 755 to a 720!
I immediately login to check and of course there are no explanations, just general sugestions for why a drop may happen, none of which apply to me. I then check my TU and EQ and both are steady at 760 and 754 respectively.
I have been gardening for a little over six months now. No new credit of any kind. Utilization <1%. Never carry a balance, no lates, no missed payments, ever. No BKs, no foreclosures, etc. The only activity of any kind on my three CB reports was Discover giving me an auto $1000 CLI.
I have been pulling my hair out over this. The only thing that I can possibly see causing this is perhpas a result of using Experian Boost. I noticed on my Experian dashboard that it shows "balances" of several hundred $s. When I drill down, I see that this is just my normal monthly mobile bill, cable/internet bill, streaming subscriptions, and storage space - all bills that are upcoming, not even billed yet, let alone due. Could Experian be considering this as utlilization? Regardless, as I am [was?] knocking on the door of 800s, I no longer see any advantage to continuing to use Boost, so I disconnected all of that.
But even if that was the case, a 35-point drop for going from <1% to 8% or 9% untilization seems overly punative.
Any thoughts or ideas would be appreciated.
Sometimes less than 1% and /or never carrying a balance you'll get the all zero penalty. Let 1 report $20. then PIF before the due date.
Purely speculation, but my best guess is that by adding all of the accounts with Boost, you significantly increased the raw number of accounts reporting a balance, the percentage of accounts reporting a balance, and likely both significantly decreased the average age of your accounts and significantly increased the number of "new accounts." All of those are scoring factors. If one already has a decently established Experian credit report, Boost is typically useless at best and can even be harmful at times.
Now that you've turned it off, I'd maybe pull an annual credit report to see if those accounts are gone now, and if so then I'd pull a new Experian score. (If you don't have a pull available elsewhere, Experian will give you a free FICO 8 on their website.)
@elboullee wrote:Haven't exprienced anything like this before, any thoughts and ideas are appreciated.
Last week I got an email alert from Experian saying that my FICO8 score had dropped 35 points - from a 755 to a 720!
I immediately login to check and of course there are no explanations, just general sugestions for why a drop may happen, none of which apply to me. I then check my TU and EQ and both are steady at 760 and 754 respectively.
I have been gardening for a little over six months now. No new credit of any kind. Utilization <1%. Never carry a balance, no lates, no missed payments, ever. No BKs, no foreclosures, etc. The only activity of any kind on my three CB reports was Discover giving me an auto $1000 CLI.
I have been pulling my hair out over this. The only thing that I can possibly see causing this is perhpas a result of using Experian Boost. I noticed on my Experian dashboard that it shows "balances" of several hundred $s. When I drill down, I see that this is just my normal monthly mobile bill, cable/internet bill, streaming subscriptions, and storage space - all bills that are upcoming, not even billed yet, let alone due. Could Experian be considering this as utlilization? Regardless, as I am [was?] knocking on the door of 800s, I no longer see any advantage to continuing to use Boost, so I disconnected all of that.
But even if that was the case, a 35-point drop for going from <1% to 8% or 9% untilization seems overly punative.
Any thoughts or ideas would be appreciated.
I think @K-in-Boston 's speculation that it has to do with your use of Boost is probably right.
@elboullee wrote:
@SouthJamaica wrote:I think @K-in-Boston 's speculation that it has to do with your use of Boost is probably right.
Nope.
TransUnion score just dropped 18 points. They wouldnt have access to any of Experian's Boost info. The only changes to my CRs over the past seven months - other than my accounts aging - is two auto CLIs, one from Discover, one from Chase.
When I opened up my TransUnion dashboard, under 'Scoring Factors' the only thing that looked odd was an "N/A" for untilization. I just checked last month's statements for all of my cards and all of them reported $0.00.
Can a month or two of 0% utilization really cause FICO scores to drop ~20 points? That sounds crazy to me, but looking at my credit reports it's the only thing that makes sense.
Absolutely. That's the all zero penalty. When all revolvers report zero, that's what you get. Actually, 20 points is kind of mild.
As soon as one of your cards reports a non-zero balance, the points will come back.