topic Re: You Just Can't Win Department in Understanding FICO® Scoring

You Just Can't Win Department

Anonymous — Thu, 23 Jul 2020 15:49:05 GMT

I have been trying for years to figure out FICO's scoring. Twenty five years ago my FICO score questions started when I lost a certain number of points when something got reported and then, when that same thing was un-reported only got back a fraction of those points. I was told then that it was just an abberration in the FICO scoring and something else happened in my credit file that caused the difference.

Well... it happened again. On July 22 my EFX reported that one of my account balanced went from $0 to $61 and I lost 12 points because of that. The very next day it went from $61 back to $0 and I got back only half of those points. Nothing else happened.

Re: You Just Can't Win Department

AzCreditGuy — Thu, 23 Jul 2020 16:03:00 GMT

I see you got some good pts for getting balance down from $61 to $0.....I just paid off a chase card from $3065 to $0 and I got 1pt for that????

Re: You Just Can't Win Department

Anonymous — Thu, 23 Jul 2020 16:07:50 GMT

@AzCreditGuy wrote:
I see you got some good pts for getting balance down from $61 to $0.....I just paid off a chase card from $3065 to $0 and I got 1pt for that????

Yeah - the day after I lost 12 points for the same $61. Four days prior on the other two CRA's my balance went UP $101 and I got +6 and +8 (also from a $0 balance). So, the conclusion is that a small increase in balance owed, even less than 1% Util, will cause you to either gain points or lose points. You figure it out.

Re: You Just Can't Win Department

SouthJamaica — Thu, 23 Jul 2020 16:59:06 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I have been trying for years to figure out FICO's scoring. Twenty five years ago my FICO score questions started when I lost a certain number of points when something got reported and then, when that same thing was un-reported only got back a fraction of those points. I was told then that it was just an abberration in the FICO scoring and something else happened in my credit file that caused the difference.

Well... it happened again. On July 22 my EFX reported that one of my account balanced went from $0 to $61 and I lost 12 points because of that. The very next day it went from $61 back to $0 and I got back only half of those points. Nothing else happened.

You don't know why you gained or lost the points. There is no necessary causal relationship between the score change and the substance of the alert.

MyFICO alerts don't provide reasons for a score change. There are certain events which trigger MyFICO alerts. If there happens to be any difference between your present score at that particular bureau and the previous score reported to you from that bureau, the score change is tacked on to the alert. There is not necessarily any connection at all between the score change and the alert substance.

MyFICO explains this in the "learn more" link contained in the alert:

Why did my score go up when I got an alert for something negative (or why did my score go down when I got an alert for something positive)?
The short answer: Your FICO(TM) Score may change because of other events not monitored by an alert.
Whenever we send you a credit alert, we also send an updated FICO Score. To ensure you get the most current score, we calculate it based on your entire credit report at that point in time - not just the new information on the alert. This means your new score may reflect other changes that are outside of the things we watch for (see everything we monitor).
Sometimes you may see your score increase when you think it should've decreased, and vice-versa, but you'll always have your most up-to-date and accurate score."

Re: You Just Can't Win Department

nmk94 — Thu, 23 Jul 2020 18:13:21 GMT

@SouthJamaica wrote:
You don't know why you gained or lost the points. There is no necessary causal relationship between the score change and the substance of the alert.

MyFICO alerts don't provide reasons for a score change. There are certain events which trigger MyFICO alerts. If there happens to be any difference between your present score at that particular bureau and the previous score reported to you from that bureau, the score change is tacked on to the alert. There is not necessarily any connection at all between the score change and the alert substance.

I can concur, as the whole reason I logged in just now was because I received some alerts. Take a look:

As you can see, it shows a +8 increase to 667 for both a bankcard balance decline, and a mortgage balance decline. Since my score went up today (the lowest alert), and then two other events happened, the score change was tacked on to both.

So which one was it? No clear way to know. I did crunch some numbers, and my mortgage balance just dropped below 80% to 79%, so maybe that was the change? However for the bankcards, I just started AZEO so two cards went to zero. Could it be that? We don't know, we can only guess. (I suspect it was AZEO).

Re: You Just Can't Win Department

Anonymous — Thu, 23 Jul 2020 18:55:22 GMT

@SouthJamaica wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
I have been trying for years to figure out FICO's scoring. Twenty five years ago my FICO score questions started when I lost a certain number of points when something got reported and then, when that same thing was un-reported only got back a fraction of those points. I was told then that it was just an abberration in the FICO scoring and something else happened in my credit file that caused the difference.

Well... it happened again. On July 22 my EFX reported that one of my account balanced went from $0 to $61 and I lost 12 points because of that. The very next day it went from $61 back to $0 and I got back only half of those points. Nothing else happened.
You don't know why you gained or lost the points. There is no necessary causal relationship between the score change and the substance of the alert.

MyFICO alerts don't provide reasons for a score change. There are certain events which trigger MyFICO alerts. If there happens to be any difference between your present score at that particular bureau and the previous score reported to you from that bureau, the score change is tacked on to the alert. There is not necessarily any connection at all between the score change and the alert substance.
MyFICO explains this in the "learn more" link contained in the alert:
Why did my score go up when I got an alert for something negative (or why did my score go down when I got an alert for something positive)?
The short answer: Your FICO(TM) Score may change because of other events not monitored by an alert.
Whenever we send you a credit alert, we also send an updated FICO Score. To ensure you get the most current score, we calculate it based on your entire credit report at that point in time - not just the new information on the alert. This means your new score may reflect other changes that are outside of the things we watch for (see everything we monitor).
Sometimes you may see your score increase when you think it should've decreased, and vice-versa, but you'll always have your most up-to-date and accurate score."

I'm going to have to disagree with you on that - whether FICO watches something or not, the only thing that changed in those 24 hours is the balance on one card.

Re: You Just Can't Win Department

TheKid2 — Thu, 23 Jul 2020 23:59:32 GMT

How does one get an account to report twice in 24 hours? The best I've ever done is calling for an off cycle update and that took at least 2-3 days.

Re: You Just Can't Win Department

KLEXH25 — Fri, 24 Jul 2020 00:29:26 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I'm going to have to disagree with you on that - whether FICO watches something or not, the only thing that changed in those 24 hours is the balance on one card.

My account balances only report once a month. Is this a Synchrony account that's reporting every single day? Or maybe a Chase account that reports to $0?

Re: You Just Can't Win Department

Anonymous — Fri, 24 Jul 2020 00:59:51 GMT

@KLEXH25 wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
I'm going to have to disagree with you on that - whether FICO watches something or not, the only thing that changed in those 24 hours is the balance on one card.
My account balances only report once a month. Is this a Synchrony account that's reporting every single day? Or maybe a Chase account that reports to $0?

Chase Amazon account

Re: You Just Can't Win Department

Anonymous — Fri, 24 Jul 2020 01:05:10 GMT

@TheKid2 wrote:
How does one get an account to report twice in 24 hours? The best I've ever done is calling for an off cycle update and that took at least 2-3 days.

They do it, I have nothing to do with it.

Re: You Just Can't Win Department

SouthJamaica — Fri, 24 Jul 2020 03:33:47 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@SouthJamaica wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
I have been trying for years to figure out FICO's scoring. Twenty five years ago my FICO score questions started when I lost a certain number of points when something got reported and then, when that same thing was un-reported only got back a fraction of those points. I was told then that it was just an abberration in the FICO scoring and something else happened in my credit file that caused the difference.

Well... it happened again. On July 22 my EFX reported that one of my account balanced went from $0 to $61 and I lost 12 points because of that. The very next day it went from $61 back to $0 and I got back only half of those points. Nothing else happened.
You don't know why you gained or lost the points. There is no necessary causal relationship between the score change and the substance of the alert.

MyFICO alerts don't provide reasons for a score change. There are certain events which trigger MyFICO alerts. If there happens to be any difference between your present score at that particular bureau and the previous score reported to you from that bureau, the score change is tacked on to the alert. There is not necessarily any connection at all between the score change and the alert substance.
MyFICO explains this in the "learn more" link contained in the alert:
Why did my score go up when I got an alert for something negative (or why did my score go down when I got an alert for something positive)?
The short answer: Your FICO(TM) Score may change because of other events not monitored by an alert.
Whenever we send you a credit alert, we also send an updated FICO Score. To ensure you get the most current score, we calculate it based on your entire credit report at that point in time - not just the new information on the alert. This means your new score may reflect other changes that are outside of the things we watch for (see everything we monitor).
Sometimes you may see your score increase when you think it should've decreased, and vice-versa, but you'll always have your most up-to-date and accurate score."

I'm going to have to disagree with you on that - whether FICO watches something or not, the only thing that changed in those 24 hours is the balance on one card.

Sorry, but you're wrong. What I said above isn't an opinion, it's a fact.

You're misinterpreting what you saw.

In fact

(a) you don't know on what day the score was calculated which appears in the 7/22 alert

(b) you don't know on what day the score was calculated which appears in the 7/23 alert

(d) you don't know what data was in the report on the day the second score was calculated

You would have to know all four of the above in order to draw a conclusion as to what change(s) in data caused the changes in score.

Re: You Just Can't Win Department

Anonymous — Fri, 24 Jul 2020 03:48:29 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I'm going to have to disagree with you on that - whether FICO watches something or not, the only thing that changed in those 24 hours is the balance on one card.

But not only those 24 hours are relevant. Something else (which does not trigger an alert) might have contributed to your 12 points loss on 7/22. When was the last time you checked your score before 7/22? Any other changes between that time and 7/22?