Score Dropped 33 Points - FICO ScoreWatch Gives No Reason!

[Neblett]

My FICO score dropped 33 points today.  The reasons it gives are:

This score decrease may be caused by these 3 new reasons:

• You have a public record or collection in addition to a serious delinquency on your credit report.
• You have multiple accounts showing missed payments or derogatory descriptions.
• You’ve recently missed a payment or the date of your most recent payment is unknown.

None of these things are new.

In fact, the only account that reported a change, according to ScoreWatch, changed in my favor and should have caused my score to go up slightly.

Biggest issue is - I have no way to check the report FICO is using to determine this score decrease, without buying a $10.95 Score Power report, and even then, there is no guarantee that this will help.  My 668 score (up from 420 in April) that I worked so hard to boost via diligence and FICO Forum strategies is now a 622, and I don't know why!

Message Edited by Neblett on 06-28-2007 11:53 AM

[Tuscani]

Sounds like a new pool.

[Neblett]

What does "new pool" mean?

[MidnightVoice]

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masdeocho wrote:

Do you know about the "bucket" factor?  Everyone is not considered equally for score calculation.  We are all in "buckets" - for example (I'm making this up, I don't know the exact parameters), there's one with people who filed BK within the past 5 years; there's one with people with 3 or more chargeoffs in the past 3 years; etc, etc.

Sometimes when you're sure your score should be improving, it goes down instead.  This is because you went from the top of the heap of people in your bucket, graduated into a higher bucket, and now your credit is not as good in relation to those people in your new bucket.  Does this make any sense??  Again, time heals credit wounds.

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Bucket=pool 

[Neblett]

Ok. I'm confused.

So, now I'm in a higher credit bracket, positive reporting can begin to bring my score down?

[Anonymous]

no, you are in a higher category, and compared to others in that category you are, as i like to say, a "small fish in a bigger pond".....it happened to me a few weeks ago, and i dropped 54 points for no apparent reason....it is frustrating, but the way it works.  they say that, on the bright side, moving to a bigger pond gives you an opportunity to eventually get a higher score....not much consolation, but better than nothing.

[Tuscani]

The purpose of pools (aka scorecards) works out more to the benefit of those with derogs or very little to no history than it does them harm. If there was only one simple bell curve including all credit files then those fortunate, extremely long established folks would have the whole top half of the score numbers scale absolutely locked up tight.

So where would that leave the person who is only beginning to build a credit history at all? Or who has had some derogs in the past but now is trying to work toward a better CR and score? They would be locked down into the basement of the score range for probably ten, twenty years or more. There's no WAY that that new user or rebuilder individual has as much good history yet as that long established individual does.

So what the pools are attempting to do is to help potential lenders figure out which of the new-credit individuals are showing characteristics which usually go on to blossom into a long clean history, and which other ones don't. The same for rebuilding individuals. By assigning relatively better scores to top of each scorecard and lower scores to the least improved, the individuals who are making progress float to the top. They actually are scoring a bit better than they would if being compared head to head with Mr. Jones who has no derogs whatsoever and has 30+ years of history already.

By trying to compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges, that means that amongst the pool of individuals who share certain key history elements, Customer A looks most like someone who will continue to do better and better and is not as likely to default whereas Customer B from the same group is not showing those indicators of steady improvement.

If it weren't for scorecards, IMO, it would be very difficult to get decent mortgages and accounts and loans without thirty years of history already established. That would mean that it would be like climbing an ice mountain barefoot to buy a house or a car or open a credit card before the age of at least forty or fifty.

[MidnightVoice]

Judging from the impossibility of moving my EX score upwards despite responsible financial management for years, I am guessing EX has forgotton about pools, buckets and scorecards. 

[Neblett]

Score dropped another 37 points today! What the hey?!

FICO says it's because I've been looking for credit - but my first 15 point drop in score 2 weeks ago was because of the inquiry I made for a car loan. No new inquiries on the report since then! Are they double dropping/dipping?

I mean I had a 668 on 6-15, then it dropped a few days later because of my car loan application. Then I received another hit today because "I've been looking for credit." How is that legal?

[Anonymous]

dog wrote:

no, you are in a higher category, and compared to others in that category you are, as i like to say, a "small fish in a bigger pond".....it happened to me a few weeks ago, and i dropped 54 points for no apparent reason....it is frustrating, but the way it works.  they say that, on the bright side, moving to a bigger pond gives you an opportunity to eventually get a higher score....not much consolation, but better than nothing.

If my memory serves me correctly, dog a few weeks ago you applied for 42 cc's, and then your score drops for no apparent reason???!!!!! That would be about 1.26 point drop per inquiry..................