Wow! 18 point drop for paying all to $0!

[jamie123]

I received an alert that my score dropped 18 points for paying all my CCs to zero! Paid BoA account from $17 to $0 and lost 18 points. I pulled an EQ report and yes, that is the only change. This is just a heads up to let everyone know how important it is to have 1 card report a small balance. I was shocked at how many points that I lost.

Look here:

[EW800]

Sadly, that sounds about right from my experience.  A couple of months ago I accidentally let all accounts report $0 and lost about 12 to 18 points, depending on the credit bureau and model.  Disheartening, but thankfully typically recovers instantly when an account reports a small balance.  

[Anonymous]

That's within the range I would have expected based upon my reading here.

Any idea how it affected your mortgage scores?

I did the same this month for some FICO 8 testing of my own with pretty files.

I have never posted $0 utilization in any of my prior testing

3 cards with $40,750 total lines

UTIL $7 - $0

EQ 840 -> 833

TU  831 -> 825

EX  850 -> 847

I allowed a balance of $1274 to report on a different card, still waiting on the updates so I can provide data.

I was trying to time it just right, but unfortunately I had EQ inquiries going from 2-> 1 for scoring, so that data point is no good.

[Anonymous]

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt (this was within the last few months).  As everyone tells you the next month report a balance and whammo, points are back.

[ForumPheen]

Just happened to me today. Just lost 16 points (overall a whopping 23 points) for having all accounts report at 0.

30 days ago, I was up 44 points with one card reporting at 21%. Today, I have none reporting and I lost ground. Next week, I'll have one reporting at 1% so will see what that does.  

Gotta love/hate relationship with FICO as I play The Credit Game right now. 

[taxi818]

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@jamie123 wrote:

I received an alert that my score dropped 18 points for paying all my CCs to zero! Paid BoA account from $17 to $0 and lost 18 points. I pulled an EQ report and yes, that is the only change. This is just a heads up to let everyone know how important it is to have 1 card report a small balance. I was shocked at how many points that I lost.

Look here:

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Im not sure why you are surprised. As you need to show some utilization to max out scores. even leaving that $17 bucks on there would help. Honestly i would rather not have any balances and care less about the points on my fico score. Thats just me however.