Hi MattieNumNums & Welcome to the FICO Forums!
@MattieNumNums wrote:
I have been doing a great job paying off the debt I have (death in the family caused me to take on a lot of bad debt.) I recently have paid off all except 2 of my collections accounts and my score went from a 502 to 599. I noticed 4 bad records on my report and filed a dispute. The very next day my score went down twice! Down to a 589 and now sitting at a 582. My credit card balances are at ZERO and in fact during that say period I paid of 2 collections accounts. Is it possible that the dispute triggered something? Help I am very upset at this! MyFico BTW was very helpful when I called them but didn't really have the answers I needed.
While there's no definitive way for us to know why your scores dropped, there's a possibility that your paying off the collection account(s) resulted in a date of last activity (DoLA) being updated which resulted in the baddie being treated as more recent = more FICO scoring pain. But, that's just one of many possibilities, especially with so many things going on with your reports as you rebuild. It's more likely that you may have only had a *net* loss of some points (some things helped & some things hurt). You might think of your credit reports as a living thing, constantly changing, even if only aging at the most stable of times. And, I'm assuming that we're talking about a FICO score, and not a FAKO.
I know it's frustrating at this juncture, but try not to sweat the two steps forward/one step back nature of rebuilding, as it relates to scores. As you work on old baddies, and build new, positive history... you'll see lots of fluctuations. It can be maddening. The important thing is to move in the right direction. And, if you haven't done so already, visit our Rebuilding Forum to get an idea on how to try PFDing & Goodwilling those baddies for maximum effect.
