topic Re: AZEO, then All Zero (temporarily) in Understanding FICO® Scoring

AZEO, then All Zero (temporarily)

Anonymous — Wed, 05 Feb 2020 00:26:59 GMT

I always have my statements report AZEO, except this month I decided to let my Cap1 Walmart Rewards MC to report the utilization. The “problem” with this is it has yet to report until next Friday or so (2/14/2020) and my 3 other accounts reported already, bringing my Experian score down by 16 points. I have paid my Cap1 Walmart Rewards card down to 3%. I really want my score to rise at least what it has lost from this. Is this a good strategy as far as bringing my score back up or should I pay it down to 1 or 2%

What are your thoughts?

Re: AZEO, then All Zero (temporarily)

Anonymous — Wed, 05 Feb 2020 00:34:55 GMT

Are you going for a mortgage in the next few months? If not, there is no point in doing AZEO.

Even for the purposes of applying for credit cards, unless you're working with a lender that uses mortgage scores like DCU or SDFCU, AZEO is a big hassle for no benefit.

Re: AZEO, then All Zero (temporarily)

AllZero — Wed, 05 Feb 2020 00:37:16 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I always have my statements report AZEO, except this month I decided to let my Cap1 Walmart Rewards MC to report the utilization. The “problem” with this is it has yet to report until next Friday or so (2/14/2020) and my 3 other accounts reported already, bringing my Experian score down by 16 points. I have paid my Cap1 Walmart Rewards card down to 3%. I really want my score to rise at least what it has lost from this. Is this a good strategy as far as bringing my score back up or should I pay it down to 1 or 2%

What are your thoughts?

You should be good to go. Wait for it to update, unless you want the 1-2%. It makes no difference as long as aggregate is under 8.9% and individual is under 28.9%. Reports from CassieCard there is 4% or 6% (I can't recall exact number) agg UTI threshold?

Re: AZEO, then All Zero (temporarily)

AllZero — Wed, 05 Feb 2020 00:41:04 GMT

EX has a 4% aggregate utilization threshold (0,4]

Re: AZEO, then All Zero (temporarily)

Anonymous — Wed, 05 Feb 2020 00:42:58 GMT

No mortgage any time soon. I know I don’t have to report AZEO, but guess I’m just used to it? Idk. However, reporting all zero is no good for scores.

Re: AZEO, then All Zero (temporarily)

Anonymous — Wed, 05 Feb 2020 00:43:52 GMT

Thanks for that, AllZero!

Re: AZEO, then All Zero (temporarily)

Anonymous — Wed, 05 Feb 2020 00:47:23 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
No mortgage any time soon. I know I don’t have to report AZEO, but guess I’m just used to it? Idk. However, reporting all zero is no good for scores.

I was doing AZEO for a bit and it's a lot of work. You run into situations like the all zero that you found yourself in and situations where some lenders don't cooperate (Synchrony's random reporting was what made me give up AZEO). Now I just let things report and pay and my scores are just fine. That's the behavior that lenders expect from the average customer too. AZEO looks like you don't use your credit unless they look at the trended data.

Re: AZEO, then All Zero (temporarily)

AllZero — Wed, 05 Feb 2020 00:49:45 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
No mortgage any time soon. I know I don’t have to report AZEO, but guess I’m just used to it? Idk. However, reporting all zero is no good for scores.
I was doing AZEO for a bit and it's a lot of work. You run into situations like the all zero that you found yourself in and situations where some lenders don't cooperate (Synchrony's random reporting was what made me give up AZEO). Now I just let things report and pay and my scores are just fine. That's the behavior that lenders expect from the average customer too. AZEO looks like you don't use your credit unless they look at the trended data.

You have a bazillion cards and a million dollar credit line of cards. I can imagine it's a lot of work.

Re: AZEO, then All Zero (temporarily)

Anonymous — Wed, 05 Feb 2020 00:58:32 GMT

@AllZero wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
No mortgage any time soon. I know I don’t have to report AZEO, but guess I’m just used to it? Idk. However, reporting all zero is no good for scores.
I was doing AZEO for a bit and it's a lot of work. You run into situations like the all zero that you found yourself in and situations where some lenders don't cooperate (Synchrony's random reporting was what made me give up AZEO). Now I just let things report and pay and my scores are just fine. That's the behavior that lenders expect from the average customer too. AZEO looks like you don't use your credit unless they look at the trended data.
You have a bazillion cards and a million dollar credit line of cards. I can imagine it's a lot of work.

Lol it's not too bad. I get paid on the 3rd every month (earlier if that falls on a weekend or holiday) so I just take 10 minutes to pull up all my apps, check Marvel and WS websites, and make my payments.

I will admit that having so many cards, not to mention so many from Synchrony, is part of the reason I have no desire to AZEO though but if I have a lender on my list that uses mortgage scores I'll AZEO the month before that app and then go back.

Re: AZEO, then All Zero (temporarily)

KLEXH25 — Wed, 05 Feb 2020 02:41:55 GMT

No worries. It’s only temporary and you’ll get the points back.

Re: AZEO, then All Zero (temporarily)

Anonymous — Wed, 05 Feb 2020 04:21:26 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
No mortgage any time soon. I know I don’t have to report AZEO, but guess I’m just used to it? Idk. However, reporting all zero is no good for scores.

I understand what you mean about AZEO. Even though I knew I could always get back to that boosted score after letting both of my cards report a balance, it was still hard to look at all those scores for a while.

Look at all the changes in red here: [All 28 FICO scores down -1 to -27 points due to both cards reporting a balance [all still under 9%].

@AllZero posted the link above to my report about the 4% aggregate utilization threshold. Basically I found that going from above 4% to 9% aggregate (4,9] to 4% or less (but never zero, so (0,4]) causes EX 8 +3pts, EQ +3pts, and TU 8 +1. (The link I posted here shows 1% to 8% aggregate change, and the -3 on EX 8).

I think that's only true for a limited set of profiles. It won't happen for everyone, but seems to hold true for anyone under 4 years of credit history, like you and me.

Re: AZEO, then All Zero (temporarily)

Anonymous — Wed, 05 Feb 2020 14:27:34 GMT

Thank you, CassieCard. Your posts are very informative and helpful!

Re: AZEO, then All Zero (temporarily)

Anonymous — Wed, 05 Feb 2020 17:16:30 GMT

@AllZero wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
No mortgage any time soon. I know I don’t have to report AZEO, but guess I’m just used to it? Idk. However, reporting all zero is no good for scores.
I was doing AZEO for a bit and it's a lot of work. You run into situations like the all zero that you found yourself in and situations where some lenders don't cooperate (Synchrony's random reporting was what made me give up AZEO). Now I just let things report and pay and my scores are just fine. That's the behavior that lenders expect from the average customer too. AZEO looks like you don't use your credit unless they look at the trended data.
You have a bazillion cards and a million dollar credit line of cards. I can imagine it's a lot of work.

I have 9 cards and I use 8-9 of them each month usually. It actually is not a lot of work. But AZEO would be a lot of work with a lot of cards. So I could be referred to as NoZero.

Re: AZEO, then All Zero (temporarily)

Anonymous — Wed, 05 Feb 2020 17:33:56 GMT

@AllZero wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
No mortgage any time soon. I know I don’t have to report AZEO, but guess I’m just used to it? Idk. However, reporting all zero is no good for scores.
I was doing AZEO for a bit and it's a lot of work. You run into situations like the all zero that you found yourself in and situations where some lenders don't cooperate (Synchrony's random reporting was what made me give up AZEO). Now I just let things report and pay and my scores are just fine. That's the behavior that lenders expect from the average customer too. AZEO looks like you don't use your credit unless they look at the trended data.
You have a bazillion cards and a million dollar credit line of cards. I can imagine it's a lot of work.

lol

I agree with Saeren that it's too much work, especially for people like us with several accounts.

However, it doesn't mean that every card is getting used every month. Though even if a person is only using 4 of their 10-20 cards, for some of us the score increase is negligible when practicing AZEO.

Re: AZEO, then All Zero (temporarily)

AllZero — Tue, 18 Feb 2020 17:36:34 GMT

Just circling back to this. On Experian,16 points appear to be a re-occurring number for penalty points when going all zero. I haven't paid attention to scorecard assignment. @Anonymous or @Anonymous do you recall seeing the same?

Re: AZEO, then All Zero (temporarily)

Anonymous — Tue, 18 Feb 2020 13:35:04 GMT

I know you weren't asking me per se, but my penalty points from EQ, TU, EX were -20, -16, -14 respectively.

Re: AZEO, then All Zero (temporarily)

AllZero — Tue, 18 Feb 2020 17:35:55 GMT

Thank you for your feedback.

Re: AZEO, then All Zero (temporarily)

Anonymous — Tue, 18 Feb 2020 23:30:17 GMT

@AllZero wrote:
Just circling back to this. On Experian,16 points appear to be a re-occurring number for penalty points when going all zero. I haven't paid attention to scorecard assignment. @Anonymous or @Anonymous do you recall seeing the same?

Yes, when I was switching which of the 2 cards carried a balance, I was temporarily at All Zero. A snapshot of the myFICO score change alerts from that is posted below. (Full report at AoYA 9mos is here. It shows why EQ/EX went up 3pts and 1pt more than they went down. It was aging. )

@angelwingz data is interesting, and more in line with what most people report - 20pts loss. I wonder if it's a different scorecard based on her AoOA being at 2yrs+. I'll have to try it again now that I've passed that mark.

Re: AZEO, then All Zero (temporarily)

AllZero — Wed, 19 Feb 2020 03:45:40 GMT

Thanks @Anonymous I'll have a read on that post.

When my file was thin-ish, on Experian , I noticed 16 point loss when I reported 0/3 and 0/4 revolvers. I'm not sure what TU or EQ did. It's been a while since I went all zero, so I don't have any data points to provide.

If I come across any other data points I read here, I'll make a book mark of it.

Re: AZEO, then All Zero (temporarily)

Bojack — Wed, 19 Feb 2020 22:13:56 GMT

I can say that I accidentally reported all zeros today and my Experian went down 22 pts. I have 7 cards, AAoA is 1 year. Very frustrating.