Started Using Upgraded Amazon Prime Visa - Score Jumped 18 Points

[gamegrrl]

I make a lot of purchases on Amazon.com but I always pay for them with my go-to card for cash back: NFCU Signature Visa. I put EVERYTHING on that card, then transfer the cash back as soon as it's available to my NFCU Money Mkt account. This is really the only card I use for anything.

When I saw that I'd been upgraded to the new Amazon Prime Visa via Chase, I made that my default card for Amazon purchases. I hadn't used that card in nearly a year. I bought about $100 worth of stuff on Amazon with the upgraded card, and paid it off before the statement hit.

Imagine my surprise today when I got a MyFICO email today saying that my credit score (Equifax) had increased 18 points, going from 827 to 845! The only alert it's showing is "Recent Activity has been detected on an inactive account in your Equifax data".

Could that really be the reason for the score jump? Nothing else has really happened with my accounts. I'm pretty boring. I pay my bills on time, and that's about it at this point. I wonder if my other two scores will go up...

[gamegrrl]

...and just now got a notice that my TU jumped to 840. Yay!

[JLK93]

It is unlikely that using the Amazon card caused the score increase. myFICO alerts don't necessarily have a cause and effect relationshiop to score changes. You probably crossed some AAoA, oldest account or youngest account threshold. Or, an installment loan may have crossed a utilization threshold.

How many cards do you have? How many cards are reporting a balance?

What is your AAoA? How old is your youngest account? How old is your oldest account?

What type of installment, auto and mortgage loans do you have. What percentage is remaining on the loans?

Congratulations on your score increase!

EDIT: Since it is the second of the month, you probably crossed an age threshold. Has your youngest account crossed the 1 year threshold?

[gamegrrl]

How many cards do you have? 9 

How many cards are reporting a balance? 1 (3%)

What is your AAoA? 5 Years 5 Months 

How old is your youngest account? 11 Months (the Amex I got to replace my Costco Amex) 

How old is your oldest account? 11 Years 9 Months

What type of installment, auto and mortgage loans do you have? What percentge is remaining on the loans?

• 1 Car loan that is mine alone - 50% remaining
• 1 Car loan that is mine and husband's - 80% remaining
• 1 HELOC that is mine alone - 91% remaining

Also, the last inquiries on my reports are the ones from when we got my husband's truck in November of 2015, over a year ago.

I was just really surprised at the big score jumps on EQ and TU. I figured after I hit 800, it would be a snail's pace. Oh, and I have no idea why Experian is lower. Maybe it just hasn't caught up with the other two yet. Experian was my HIGHEST score (835) prior to today's increases.

---

[JLK93]

Are you sure the Amex is 11 months and not 12 months. This score increase sounds a lot like crossing the 1 year youngest account threshold? What is the open date of the Amex?

Keep in mind that, for the purposes of FICO scoring, all accounts are considered to have been opened on the 1st of the month.

[Anonymous]

Are you sure that one of your cards was reporting a balance prior to your score increase?  Is there a chance that all of your revolvers at the same time reported zero balances?  If that's the case and then you used your Amazon card and reported a balance with it, you'd expect almost exactly an 18 point game in going from no revolving CC use to now having revolving CC use.

[elim]

If you are only using 1 card and usually pay it before the statement cuts, you rarely trigger a myFICO alert. The upgrade/change to the Amazon card (and recent use after dormancy) caused a score pull and it showed you your updated score (that may have been higher for some time).

[gamegrrl]

REALLY good questions, team!

The AMEX open date is showing as Feb 2016, so the "1 year mark" point is valid.

Yes, I only ever show a balance on one card, the NFCU Signature Visa, and I always pay it down to 3% before the statement cuts.

The Amazon Prime Visa card was used, but I paid it down to $0 before the statement cut.

I pulled a full, three-CRA report on December 26, and all three scores were, at that point, what I believe they were before today's myFICO alerts.

Tickled pink here, of course, but ever-inquisitive about the hows and whys of FICO scoring. I've been here at MyFICO for years now, and have become super smitten with all of the cause and effect skullduggery. It's become ALMOST my favorite hobby 

[Thomas_Thumb]

gamegrrl - 

The Fico scoring models prefer to see activity on multiple open accounts. That does not mean you need to report balances on said accounts to show activity. 

I am a bit confused but, it appears that you are using a card that was previously inactive and/or the number of open accounts showing activity has increased. Is that correct? Open accounts showing activity would encompass credit cards, charge cards and loans.

As mentioned in other threads, my Fico 08 bankcard enhanced score sometimes gets hurt my "too few accounts with recent payment information". I surmise the too few threshold is three accounts or less showing activity. Not sure that is in play with your situation but, wanted to throw that out there.

Otherwise, age of youngest account crossing a threshold, as mentioned above, is a likely possibility.

[Anonymous]

TT, JLK, Elim, and any other experts --

This thread started with our OP relaying an alert message, which was "Recent Activity has been detected on an inactive account in your [insert CRA name] data."

People who use the myFICO credit monitoring packages get this alert message all the time, and many of them wonder whether using a card after a long period of inactivity could in itself affect one's score.  (Assume that we are talking about a small purchase and that the card then reports this small balance to the CRAs.)

Can we say with virtual certainty that (apart from the two known issues listed below) this Inactive To Active transition is not in any way part of the FICO algorithms?  I would love to get a final answer to this.  It affects me in a practical way, because I tend to go out of my way to use each one of my cards every three months because of this d*$m alert message -- essentially on the off chance that there is some kind of connection with the actual algorithm.

The two ways that have been identified that this transition could affect the score are as follows:

    (1) "Too few accounts with recent payment information" (as TT observes, FICO appears to like it when more than just 1-2 accounts are showing activity).  Here the card becoming active might HELP the score.

    (2) Number of credit cards showing a balance (FICO likes it when most of your cards are showing a $0 balance).  Here the card becoming active might HARM the score.

Aside from that, is everyone certain that the text of the alert is simply that: the text of alertable event, but not an event that has any relationship whatsoever to any FICO scoring model?

PS.  As BBS observes, a final way that the score could be affected is if all cards were previously $0.