You gotta love these FICO scoring models....

[IrishPM]

I disputed 2 items in my Experian credit report and got the results today. The first item was my BMW financial services car loan that I paid off early in March 2014 and never missed a payment and never late...BMW Financial Services had not updated my account showing a zero balance and the account closed since March so I disputed the information in my credit report that showed a $5,600 balance. Big mistake. My score dropped 21 points. I'm guessing auto installment loans don't count in the mix of your utilization which is strange in itself because you're paying off/down debt which is the whole idea if you want to improve your score.  

The second item I disuputed was a federal tax lien that was paid off in April 2005 and officially released in August 2005. Prior to this update, my credit file showed the "release" happened in February 2007 so I disputed this information. Experian deleted this public record from my file. That's good news.

[Revelate]

See your other post regarding the tax lien (congrats btw!).

With the auto loan, installment loans in general don't impact revolving utilization; installment utilization if used, is incredibly minor in comparison.  Did you lose the 21 points because the account is marked in dispute currently, or because it is now reporting closed?  The details are important on that one, also the lien's coming off would likely affect your score as well but without seeing a before and after picture of the credit report, hard to say what the cause was.  

I assume your scores are the EX pulls from myFICO, or were they from Experian?

[IrishPM]

The installment account is showing "account closed/paid as agreed"...it lists a "high balance" and under current balance it shows "N/A"....I pulled my Experian report today on myFICO....I agree that an auto installment loan wouldn't be counted as part of my utilization but it was wishful thinking...I was just disappointed that my score dropped 21 points due to "positive" changes to my report...you know, like less debt and a public record being deleted...it doesn't make sense but hopefully it's temporary...

[Revelate]

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@IrishPM wrote:

The installment account is showing "account closed/paid as agreed"...it lists a "high balance" and under current balance it shows "N/A"....I pulled my Experian report today on myFICO....I agree that an auto installment loan wouldn't be counted as part of my utilization but it was wishful thinking...I was just disappointed that my score dropped 21 points due to "positive" changes to my report...you know, like less debt and a public record being deleted...it doesn't make sense but hopefully it's temporary...

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If you don't have other open installment loans (2 anecdotally), paying one off under FICO 8 tends to be a negative.

As for the negative, if you have a comparitively short history and that was your only derogatory, we've seen instances of FICO score dropping when that happens.  Where are you getting your score from?