Sudden 55 point drop -- no reason -- help!

[Anonymous]

I've been reducing my credit utilization on a steady pace over the past year or so, and my score has been going up as expected. Last FICO 8 update was 733, as I moved from about 40% util to about 26%. I have no negatives in my file, and nothing new has happened aside from my paying down the credit cards.

I check my scores using myFico, credit karma, and then using the free (FAKO) scores from my banks, just to track progress. One of the ones I check is Capital One, which uses Credit Wise / Transunion / VantageScore 3.0 (sorry, I'm sort of new at this). It updates weekly. So today, I check it and it had dropped 55 points -- from 734 to 679 -- since last week. 

Literally the only thing to change since the prior week is that I paid down 14% more of my utilization. I'm completely freaking out. Any thoughts?

Thanks.

[simplynoir]

If nothing else has shown up negative on your report then don't worry about it. Capital One's free credit scores use the Vantage 3.0 scorecard which nobody uses to my knowledge. Unless the score provided is FICO generated like the myFico you use I would ignore it and use the FAKO scores as you said for tracking balances, new accounts and inquiries.

[Anonymous]

Okay thanks. That is encouraging.

But up until this point, the Cap One Vantage Score had been moving step-for-step with the real FICO score. So now I'm worried that next time my real FICO score updates, it's going to tank and I can't figure out why.

[arkane]

Don't bother with VantageScore, the model appears schizophrenic at best. My personal experience is VantageScore punishes you much more heavily for things that FICO either doesn't care about, or ding you maybe 10 points at most. My FICO scores are in my sig, and my VS 3.0 is only 727 across the board, from 28-45 points lower than FICO lol.

[Anonymous]

Thanks. I guess the reason I'm concerned is not because the VantageScore is lower than my FICO score, but because up until a day ago, it had been basically the exact *same* as my FICO score for a year plus. 

So in my case, Vantage had tracked FICO really well. And now it just dropped by 55 points.

[SouthJamaica]

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@Anonymouswrote:

I've been reducing my credit utilization on a steady pace over the past year or so, and my score has been going up as expected. Last FICO 8 update was 733, as I moved from about 40% util to about 26%. I have no negatives in my file, and nothing new has happened aside from my paying down the credit cards.

I check my scores using myFico, credit karma, and then using the free (FAKO) scores from my banks, just to track progress. One of the ones I check is Capital One, which uses Credit Wise / Transunion / VantageScore 3.0 (sorry, I'm sort of new at this). It updates weekly. So today, I check it and it had dropped 55 points -- from 734 to 679 -- since last week. 

Literally the only thing to change since the prior week is that I paid down 14% more of my utilization. I'm completely freaking out. Any thoughts?

Thanks.

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The Capital One Creditwise score is Vantage 3.0, pretty meaningless. If you want to know the truth about your important scores, you should pull a 3 bureau report from MyFICO and find out what's really going on.

[Anonymous]

Definitely no reason to sweat your VS drop, even if your VS followed your FICO closely for a length of time.

[NRB525]

OP, the score drop would be alarming.
You say no negatives in your file, but are there any negatives in your credit history? Any lates of any kind, ever?

[Anonymous]

There is a single 30-day late payment from about 6 years ago on a cc. That's it.

A little more info: The Cap One FAKO score comes with a "report" -- obviously not a full real TU report -- and when I opened it, it shows a "new" item of my remaining student loan debt (about $18k). I've been paying that down consistently for ages. So the only thing I can think of is that when the loan got transferred or sold (or whatever they do with those) recently from the DOE to one of its contract lenders, that somehow posted as a "new" loan?

Also, I took a look at my updated TU and Exp reports and FICO scores tonight, and neither of them show this loan as "new." They've had it on the report in the same form forever, and my scores there were both where I expected (730s).

Very weird.

[Anonymous]

Hi, how long have you been using the 'AZEO' method per your signature? How much did it improve your scores? I ask because I'm thinking about giving it a try.