topic Re: Experian Scoring Errors in Understanding FICO® Scoring

Experian Scoring Errors

sghosh5 — Tue, 24 Apr 2018 14:15:25 GMT

I have been dilligently paying off most of my cards and paying down my over all balances. My scores all moved up from 580s to 650 - 660 ranges now and i still have balances to pay off. Paid down from alomost 96% utilization to 35% and still more to report. One of the cards on my account is still at 96% utilization. Yesterday when it reported on Experian, my scores dropped 24 points !! Alert said total revolving utlization is 96%. That is so wrong. Only one card is that utilization and it hadn't changed anything this while, so it is not a new information on my credit. While this did not affect anything on Equifax and TU. In fact Equifax score went up 7 points since that card showed i actually reduced balance on it. So demoralizing from Experian

Re: Experian Scoring Errors

Anonymous — Tue, 24 Apr 2018 14:59:38 GMT

Yep, it's demoralizing and it's a fantastic lesson to take to heart permanently: if you use a card for close to the limit, don't be shocked if that gets reported even if it's midcycle.

Look back and ask yourself based on your charge/payment patterns how you could have paid it down early to keep it from every reporting over 28% in the past cycle. Then do that from now on.

Re: Experian Scoring Errors

sghosh5 — Tue, 24 Apr 2018 15:20:54 GMT

The card had always been reporting 99% to 96% all this while i am paying down balances on the others. All this while the score had been going up. Until yesterday when it reported again for April, the score dropped significantly. It is not like the card utilization was below 30% last month.

Re: Experian Scoring Errors

Anonymous — Tue, 24 Apr 2018 15:29:27 GMT

Does the Experian score actually say "FICO" next to the number?

Re: Experian Scoring Errors

sghosh5 — Tue, 24 Apr 2018 15:32:19 GMT

This is what it shows

Re: Experian Scoring Errors

sghosh5 — Tue, 24 Apr 2018 15:34:01 GMT

And this is the same account got an alert today which actually shows decrease in balance

Re: Experian Scoring Errors

Anonymous — Tue, 24 Apr 2018 15:36:17 GMT

You're confusing an alert with a score pull. See my signature link on this exact topic -- your score did not drop because of 96% utilization. It dropped for another reason entirely.

Re: Experian Scoring Errors

Anonymous — Tue, 24 Apr 2018 15:49:26 GMT

ABCD is exactly right in the above post.

The score change provided with an alert often has nothing to do with the alert you received. In this case, that's 100% what's going on. Something else changed and caused your score drop and whatever that was simply wasn't an alertable event.

Re: Experian Scoring Errors

sghosh5 — Tue, 24 Apr 2018 17:28:51 GMT

A 24 point drop has to be something significant that reported on credit. And i thought MYFico alerts all credit changes.

Re: Experian Scoring Errors

sghosh5 — Tue, 24 Apr 2018 17:29:40 GMT

A 24 point drop has to be something significant that reported on credit. And i thought myfico alerts all credit changes.

Re: Experian Scoring Errors

Anonymous — Tue, 24 Apr 2018 17:34:39 GMT

@sghosh5 wrote:
A 24 point drop has to be something significant that reported on credit. And i thought myfico alerts all credit changes.

If you would read my signature link as I asked you to, you would also have read what MyFICO alerts are triggered by.

I'll repeat it one last time: read my signature link on why your score dropped. This is a common question here and that's why I answered it in a post.

Re: Experian Scoring Errors

sghosh5 — Tue, 24 Apr 2018 18:04:13 GMT

Ok read your post and a really good one. I see what you are seeing and could be a case of a day. Because i just went to creditscore.com and pulled my free experian fico score and report and now actually score jumped back up to 656. Also i see all my updated paid off accounts posted already while myfico still had not alerted. I think this has to be a glitch in myfico. Thanks for all the input

Re: Experian Scoring Errors

Anonymous — Wed, 25 Apr 2018 12:00:08 GMT

Glad it worked for you! FICO scoring can be very very weird because of timing. I've seen my score drop one day, bounce back the next day, but it's hard to pull a score daily for free.

If you pay for credit monitoring, you want to move the monitoring pull date to at least a week after your last statement closes so you get the freshest data.