Too many accounts with a balance?

[Anonymous]

Hello!

I have the following cards:
Citi DC (1500$)
Chase Marriott rewards premier (7500$)
Amex BCE (2000$)
Discover it (750$)

FICO is between 720 and 740 depending on the CB (as of yesterday via CCT)

I recently tried to get a CLI (soft pull only) because my discover it credit line is so much lower than my other ones and it got denied. They sent me a letter and one of the reasons they listed was "too many accounts with a balance" I have never seen this before. I have never let any debt revolve but I let all of my accounts post with a balance of 2-5% of their limit because that is what I thought I was supposed to do. Now I'm wondering if I should be letting some of my accounts post a 0 bal. I see, however, that on months that I have accidentally posted a 0 Bal on my cards (esp AMEX) that it reports as "unknown" on that month for payment history instead of "on time". I'm assuming this doesn't hurt my score but it also doesn't (also assuming) help my score as far as my payment history goes. What is the best option? Is it worth calling discover to have them look at my CLI request? If it's going to cost me a hard pull its not worth it for me. Thanks for your help!

[Appleman]

Try to let just one card post a balance less than 9%.

Use them all but pay 3 of them off prior to the statement cutting.

My guess is that will make the 'Too many accounts with balances' notice drop off. Not sure if you will get a score boost, but a small one is likely.

[Anonymous]

when I let an account post with a 0 bal will it still count as an on time payment for my payment history? 

[Appleman]

Yes, I have many accounts that all show monthly reporting as paid on time with a 0 balance reported. I try to run at least a little activity every other months on my cards, I just pay as soon as the charge posts.

[RonM21]

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@Appleman wrote:

Try to let just one card post a balance less than 9%.

Use them all but pay 3 of them off prior to the statement cutting.

My guess is that will make the 'Too many accounts with balances' notice drop off. Not sure if you will get a score boost, but a small one is likely.

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+1 on ths

And sometimes there seems to not be any true reasoning in what it says for the denial. I have several accounts that were reporting balances at one point, and when checking with Discover for increases, they were wanting to give me one. 

[RobertEG]

Scoring of utilization of revolving credit has three najor components, in general order of weighting:

Overall % utilization (all revolving accts combined

% utilization of each indvidual account

% of accounts reporting a balance