topic Re: MyFico alert question in Understanding FICO® Scoring

MyFico alert question

raisemysc0re — Sun, 04 Dec 2016 16:20:51 GMT

My TU score jumped up by 3 points yesterday. The reason in the alert was: (A new inquiry was added to your credit report).

I currently have 6 inquiries on TU and they are all within the last 6 months.

Could this inquiry be the real reason for the increase or is it that something else caused the increase (Age maybe?) but when MyFico grabbed the score the only change they saw was the inquiry?

I'm just not sure how an inquiry can cause an increase in the score...

Re: MyFico alert question

Anonymous — Sun, 04 Dec 2016 19:00:53 GMT

@raisemysc0re wrote:
My TU score jumped up by 3 points yesterday. The reason in the alert was: (A new inquiry was added to your credit report).
I currently have 6 inquiries on TU and they are all within the last 6 months.
Could this inquiry be the real reason for the increase or is it that something else caused the increase (Age maybe?) but when MyFico grabbed the score the only change they saw was the inquiry?
I'm just not sure how an inquiry can cause an increase in the score...

You got it! There are certain events in your credit profile that are alertable. These are events that your credit monitoring system (probably the myFICO 3B Ultimate product?) has defined as triggers that will cause it to recalculate your score. But there are many ways a credit report can change that are not alertable. Thus it is very common for your report to change in a way that causes your score to change, and then change again, and then maybe change a third time, and yet you don't see any of those changes to your report or score. Than finally some alertable event happens. The only text you are given by your myFICO monitoring product is a description of the alertable event, but all those score changes are rolled into that single snapshot.

Some people decide that such an "alert-based" system is therefore (in their opinion) unhelpful or confusing, and they might switch to an approach that allows them to control when their reports and scores are pulled (e.g. Credit Check Total, say).

The best way to use an alert based system that I have heard of is when a person has several credit cards and uses most or all of them. He then talks to his creditors and arranges the statement dates to cut at different times throughout the month. Since a CC balance changing is an alertable event, he's guaranteed to get alerts throughout the month. That lowers the chance that many score changing events are being rolled into a single alert.

And then there are others of us who are just plain stingy and hate to pay even a nickel we don't absolutely need. That'd be me. :-) Folks like us only use the many free tools that are out there for getting free reports and free scores. So we don't use alert-based systems at all or even systems like CCT.

PS. Smart of you to figure out that an inquiry could not cause your score to go UP. Good job!

Re: MyFico alert question

Anonymous — Sat, 10 Dec 2016 23:14:14 GMT

+1

I have a recent example. I knew from getting my free EX report over a week ago that my EX score went down 5 points (new account hitting my report). MyFICO just sent an EX alert yesterday that my Cap1 balance had changed, and, with that alert, MyFICO also reported that my EX had gone down 5 points.

Re: MyFico alert question

JLK93 — Sat, 10 Dec 2016 23:29:41 GMT

@raisemysc0re wrote:
My TU score jumped up by 3 points yesterday. The reason in the alert was: (A new inquiry was added to your credit report).
I currently have 6 inquiries on TU and they are all within the last 6 months.
Could this inquiry be the real reason for the increase or is it that something else caused the increase (Age maybe?) but when MyFico grabbed the score the only change they saw was the inquiry?
I'm just not sure how an inquiry can cause an increase in the score...

Who was in inquiry from?

Re: MyFico alert question

raisemysc0re — Sun, 11 Dec 2016 01:34:54 GMT

The latest inquiry was from Sync (Amazon Store Card which was approved)..