topic Re: Account balance decrease has had a strange effect on credit report in Understanding FICO® Scoring

Account balance decrease has had a strange effect on credit report

Anonymous — Wed, 19 May 2021 23:36:27 GMT

Last month I decided to pay down a chunk of debt on a credit card to improve my utilization score,

Normally it's around $5000 so 10% utilization - I paid it down to $2500 to ensure it was under 10%

so equifax improved from 680 to 733 - Transunion stayed the same - Experian declined 683 to 630

These scores changed as soon as I got a notification regarding the improved utilization

I presume experian should have increased my score or am I wrong? if so is there a way to get them to take a look at the data again?

Re: Account balance decrease has had a strange effect on credit report

OmarGB9 — Thu, 20 May 2021 01:30:33 GMT

Score updates aren't always directly correlated to the report updates. Something else happened on your EX file. I would look over it closely.

Re: Account balance decrease has had a strange effect on credit report

Anonymous — Thu, 20 May 2021 01:33:32 GMT

Thanks for repling

Nothing change in April according to experian - the last thing to change before the big drop was credit usage increase on my discover card in March 10th

Re: Account balance decrease has had a strange effect on credit report

OmarGB9 — Thu, 20 May 2021 01:42:24 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Thanks for repling
Nothing change in April according to experian - the last thing to change before the big drop was credit usage increase on my discover card in March 10th

Credit usage going up, depending on the amount, can cause large drops like that.

Re: Account balance decrease has had a strange effect on credit report

Slabenstein — Thu, 20 May 2021 01:45:03 GMT

What are your sources for your scores, what was the date of the notification that your utilization had improved on EX, and what was the date of your next most recent score pull for EX on that service?

Re: Account balance decrease has had a strange effect on credit report

Anonymous — Thu, 20 May 2021 14:31:56 GMT

What are your sources for your scores - myfico

what was the date of the notification that your utilization had improved on EX - 5/7/21

what was the date of your next most recent score pull for EX on that service - 4/29/21

Re: Account balance decrease has had a strange effect on credit report

Slabenstein — Thu, 20 May 2021 16:54:58 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
What are your sources for your scores - myfico
what was the date of the notification that your utilization had improved on EX - 5/7/21
what was the date of your next most recent score pull for EX on that service - 4/29/21

What is the age of your oldest reporting account, closed or open, on EX, and is that account also on your TU and EQ reports?

Re: Account balance decrease has had a strange effect on credit report

babygirl1256 — Thu, 20 May 2021 16:57:49 GMT

@Anonymous The same thing happened to me with EX -and- there's a 47 point difference than my TU/EQ scores. After I completely compared all 3 CRs, I determined that EX purged a positive trade line . . . I called and was told that all positive "transferred/closed" trade lines are purged after 5 years. I have never heard that before and am currently trying to confirm that information. EX did purge the CO for BoA that was scheduled to delete in 11/2022 . . . so I'm not going to make a huge stink out of it because my EX file is no longer "dirty" . . . pick my battles, right?

Re: Account balance decrease has had a strange effect on credit report

Anonymous — Thu, 20 May 2021 19:17:36 GMT

According to myfico it is 53rd they say 2018 but the account was opened in 2015 it was a credit card and I was a authorized user.

yes it is on all three

Re: Account balance decrease has had a strange effect on credit report

Anonymous — Thu, 20 May 2021 19:25:16 GMT

I feel like I am battling the system with every update!

Re: Account balance decrease has had a strange effect on credit report

Slabenstein — Thu, 20 May 2021 19:28:07 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
According to myfico it is 53rd they say 2018 but the account was opened in 2015 it was a credit card and I was a authorized user.
yes it is on all three

Hm. The reason I asked the above questions is that aging changes, which occur on the first of the month, are a common cause for credit score changes that don't appear to have a reason, and the date range during which this change occured includes May 1. Unless an account has fallen off of a person's report, the only real way that aging can cause a negative change is when, on a clean file, the oldest account aging to three years causes scorecard reassignment, resulting in a temporary score drop. Normally, you'd see it across all three bureaus unless a bureau had an account the others didn't.

So, from what you said, it's still a possibility that that's what happened here if the AU account is reporting strangely between the bureaus, but it could also not be and we need to look at a few more things:

1) Do you have any delinquencies more severe than isolated 30D's? (Forgot to ask that earlier.)

2) What date in 2018 does MyFICO say the AU account was opened?

3) On your reports pulled directly from www.annualcreditreport.com, what is listed for the open date of the AU account in question on each bureau?

Re: Account balance decrease has had a strange effect on credit report

Anonymous — Fri, 21 May 2021 13:22:48 GMT

Last night I pulled all three from annualcreditreport

1) Do you have any delinquencies more severe than isolated 30D's? (Forgot to ask that earlier.)
yes, 53rd credit card I am in the process of trying to get the issue resolved, I can give you more info if it is helpful.
transunion 60 days 02/20 - 60 days 01/20
Experian - doesn't appear
Equifax - 60 days 01/20

2) What date in 2018 does MyFICO say the AU account was opened?

Feb 2018 is as far back as the payment record goes but the open date was 05/2014

3) On your reports pulled directly from www.annualcreditreport.com, what is listed for the open date of the AU account in question on each bureau?
Equifax - 20th May 2014
Experian - no record

Transunion - 20th May 2014

Re: Account balance decrease has had a strange effect on credit report

Slabenstein — Fri, 21 May 2021 13:28:06 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Last night I pulled all three from annualcreditreport

1) Do you have any delinquencies more severe than isolated 30D's? (Forgot to ask that earlier.)
yes, 53rd credit card I am in the process of trying to get the issue resolved, I can give you more info if it is helpful.
transunion 60 days 02/20 - 60 days 01/20
Experian - doesn't appear
Equifax - 60 days 01/20

2) What date in 2018 does MyFICO say the AU account was opened?
Feb 2018 is as far back as the payment record goes but the open date was 05/2014

3) On your reports pulled directly from www.annualcreditreport.com, what is listed for the open date of the AU account in question on each bureau?
Equifax - 20th May 2014
Experian - no record
Transunion - 20th May 2014

So the only lates are on the 5/3rd AU card, and that tradeline doesn't appear on your Experian ACR? What your oldest tradeline on that report, and what was its open date?

Re: Account balance decrease has had a strange effect on credit report

Anonymous — Fri, 21 May 2021 13:36:32 GMT

yes the only lates are with 53rd

the only other issue with my report is a medical collection in 2019

yes it doesn't appear on the experian credit report
oldest tradeline on experian is an American express credit card going back to Oct 2014 I was a AU on that card as well

Re: Account balance decrease has had a strange effect on credit report

Slabenstein — Fri, 21 May 2021 13:40:10 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
yes the only lates are with 53rd
the only other issue with my report is a medical collection in 2019
yes it doesn't appear on the experian credit report
oldest tradeline on experian is an American express credit card going back to Oct 2014 I was a AU on that card as well

What's the amount of the medical collection and when was the oldest non-AU tradeline on your EX report opened?

Re: Account balance decrease has had a strange effect on credit report

Anonymous — Fri, 21 May 2021 13:47:27 GMT

medical collection $352

jpmcb credit card - 11/2020

Re: Account balance decrease has had a strange effect on credit report

Slabenstein — Fri, 21 May 2021 13:56:53 GMT

Okay, the +$100 medical collection on EX means that that bureau is also on a dirty card, so it couldn't be scorecard reassignment to mature, even if the open date for either oldest line or oldest non-AU line had been 5/2018. But there was something that happened on your EX report (and probably not the other two) between 4/30 and 5/7 that caused a score drop. If you want to post your complete profile data for each bureau from before and after the score change, we can help you look through it and see if there's anything else there that would help explain it.

Re: Account balance decrease has had a strange effect on credit report

Anonymous — Fri, 21 May 2021 14:15:42 GMT

Okay understood, what's a "dirty card"?

Re: Account balance decrease has had a strange effect on credit report

Slabenstein — Fri, 21 May 2021 18:10:14 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Okay understood, what's a "dirty card"?

FICO divides profiles into different scorecards based on information in the profile, and a scorecard is just an algorithm that weights things in a profile differently than the other scorecards for the same version. FICO8 has 12 scorecards, four of which are for profiles with derogatories worse than isolated 30D. Those four are called "dirty" cards, and the eight for profiles w/o such a derogatory are called "clean". You can read more about it in @Anonymous's excellent scoring primer.