topic Re: Equifax 44 points Drop in Understanding FICO® Scoring

Equifax 44 points Drop

Anonymous — Tue, 15 Dec 2020 20:22:42 GMT

Hello everyone if anyone can help me understand how did my score drop 44 points.

Little background i have a thin credit line. i just started this year to open cards and rebuilt my credit.

1 cap1 secured card $500 - 11 months

1 cap1 quicksilver $500 - 2 months

1 victoria secret $750 - 3 months

1 discover secured $300 - 4 months

After 11 months of credit history my EX 517 and TU 580 went to EX 629 , TU 639. both EX and TU has 1 same collection showing and 1 charge off of credit one on my EX only.

Equifax has no baddies nothing it has a Macy card that stop reporting after 2012 but its still in my CR showing as 16+ year old account.

all this time my EQ Fico was at 773. This month my cap1 Quicksilver finally reported to all the agency after 45 days of opening the card.

EX before quicksilver showed up was at 627 then after it was reported dec 15 i gained 2 points to 629.

TU before quicksilver showed up was at 635 then after it was reported dec 15 i gained 4 points to 639.

EQ before quicksilver showed up was at 773 then after it was reported dec 15 i lost 44 points to 729.

Re: Equifax 44 points Drop

Anonymous — Tue, 15 Dec 2020 20:37:27 GMT

First point, may not have a thin credit file. You listed 4 cards in your original post, but you may have other accounts. In your negative reason codes it states that your oldest account is 16 years old. That account is not listed, and I imagine you've had other accounts between that one and the 4 most recent ones you mentioned. File thickness goes off of total accounts on your CR, both open and closed. That being said, how many total are on your CR?

Second, you are looking at two different scorecard assignments... you are clean on EQ, but dirty on EX/TU. That being said, the way those scores react to profile changes will often be quite different.

Third, your scores more than likely did not go up when your new CC reported. Typically if anything scores will drop a little due to the age of accounts reduction, so the fact that you're showing upward movement simply suggests that other things are going on with your file.

Do you have access to your negative reason statements on EQ both before and after the new card reported? I would compare those reports account by account to see what changed from one to the next outside of the new CC showing up.

Also you mentioned the CCs you have, but didn't list out their [reported] balances to go along with those limits. Changing reported balances are one of the most common causes of Fico score movement, so comparing those before/after would be a good start.

Re: Equifax 44 points Drop

Anonymous — Tue, 15 Dec 2020 21:14:25 GMT

One thing i forgot to mention all this time i kept my utilization under 8% but i forgot cap1 changed there statement cut off date. For my cap1 secured card statement cut off date was 15th of every month and i thought its done deal i went on to shopping then on 18th was the new statement cut off date so that card reported $300+ new balance its like 61% utilization on it in the month of November. i have a already paid it off and left $20 so it can report $20 balance after the new statement cut off date Dec 18. As for the Macy i had that store card very long time ago i must have opened it to get a discount 16+ years ago but i think after 2012 Macy closed the account but haven't reported to EQ its closed. Is it cause of the $300 balance from November score went down?

Re: Equifax 44 points Drop

Anonymous — Tue, 15 Dec 2020 22:12:52 GMT

If the $300 reported balance bumped one of your cards up to 61% utilization, that definitely would result in a Fico score drop. An even more important question however would be what your before/after overall utilization was... as if you crossed a threshold there it could be worth as least as many points as the ding from the individual card spike.

Re: Equifax 44 points Drop

Anonymous — Tue, 15 Dec 2020 22:47:44 GMT

This is November 15 report as you can see i didn't have the cap1 Quicksilver in the report yet. i left few small balance that month just for reporting as i always PIF. You might be right since my file is so small and so little credit limits 1 showing up 61% utilization might have caused it. I will have to wait after dec 18 ones that card reports only $20 and zero on all others to see if that what cause it to drop.

Re: Equifax 44 points Drop

Anonymous — Wed, 16 Dec 2020 00:33:23 GMT

Yes, I would say that individual card spike caused it. Simple enough to test, return the reported balance on that card back to where it was and see what happens to your score.

Re: Equifax 44 points Drop

Anonymous — Sat, 26 Dec 2020 07:08:16 GMT

@Anonymous two things May have come together at once. As BBS observed you are on a clean scorecard at Equifax and you just got a new card, so you probably experienced Scorecard reassignment plus the reported high utilization combined to cause the drop.

** sorry this didn't post I found it in my drafts so now I'm posting it.