topic Re: Utilization went down, and so did score, random glitch maybe? in Understanding FICO® Scoring

Utilization went down, and so did score, random glitch maybe?

Anonymous — Mon, 08 Nov 2021 23:06:47 GMT

Recent Transunion report shows I paid my AMEX bill like normal and my credit unitlization dropped from 31% to 26% causing my scores on both Experian and Transunion to drop by roughly 70 points. Its a regualr Amex Charge card PIF every month. Any idea why lowering the utilization would also cause the scores to decrease? Whats alos funny is my wife is an autorized user on the account and when her scores updated they went up by an average of 45 points.

Re: Utilization went down, and so did score, random glitch maybe?

chiefone4u — Mon, 08 Nov 2021 23:52:54 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Recent Transunion report shows I paid my AMEX bill like normal and my credit unitlization dropped from 31% to 26% causing my scores on both Experian and Transunion to drop by roughly 70 points. Its a regualr Amex Charge card PIF every month. Any idea why lowering the utilization would also cause the scores to decrease? Whats alos funny is my wife is an autorized user on the account and when her scores updated they went up by an average of 45 points.

The lower utilization didn't cause your scores to drop.

Your payment likely triggered an alert; when an alert is issued they show you your current score.

Something else changed in your profile between alerts that didn't trigger an alert.

To best figure out what that change is/was, you'll need to compare credit reports from before the change and after the change.

A 70 point drop sounds like a collection or charge-off recently updated.

Re: Utilization went down, and so did score, random glitch maybe?

simplynoir — Tue, 09 Nov 2021 00:21:12 GMT

Where are you getting your EX and TU scores from?

Re: Utilization went down, and so did score, random glitch maybe?

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Nov 2021 01:06:20 GMT

@chiefone4u According to credit karma, nothing else changed. https://imgur.com/fDFjUUy No collections or charge offs, just a couple late payments from 2-4 years ago that have been on the report ever since. I just checked my experian report and it popped back up 35 points, which leads me to believe credit karma is just **bleep**ty with reporting transunion, shocker I know.

Re: Utilization went down, and so did score, random glitch maybe?

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Nov 2021 01:08:06 GMT

@simplynoir Pulling TU from credit karma and EX form experian.com

Re: Utilization went down, and so did score, random glitch maybe?

simplynoir — Tue, 09 Nov 2021 01:21:00 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@simplynoir Pulling TU from credit karma and EX form experian.com

Ignore the TU score from Credit Karma; CK uses Vantage 3.0 which no banks really use. People use them purely for informative purposes like credit pulls, balances reporting, and so on so don't worry too much about that score

The EX score is the accurate one since it's FICO 08 which a lot of the banks do use. I can see from reading the above comment that it corrected itself which is good. Based on what you've posted you crossed the 28.9% utilization threshold which should have given you a slight scoring increase

Re: Utilization went down, and so did score, random glitch maybe?

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Nov 2021 02:14:16 GMT

@simplynoir wrote: Ignore the TU score from Credit Karma; CK uses Vantage 3.0 which no banks really use. People use them purely for informative purposes like credit pulls, balances reporting, and so on so don't worry too much about that score

The EX score is the accurate one since it's FICO 08 which a lot of the banks do use. I can see from reading the above comment that it corrected itself which is good. Based on what you've posted you crossed the 28.9% utilization threshold which should have given you a slight scoring increase

Thanks for the great info! Always heard CK scoring was trash. I have a long road to the 800 club but at least it's going in the right direction.

Re: Utilization went down, and so did score, random glitch maybe?

SouthJamaica — Tue, 09 Nov 2021 19:21:17 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Recent Transunion report shows I paid my AMEX bill like normal and my credit unitlization dropped from 31% to 26% causing my scores on both Experian and Transunion to drop by roughly 70 points. Its a regualr Amex Charge card PIF every month. Any idea why lowering the utilization would also cause the scores to decrease? Whats alos funny is my wife is an autorized user on the account and when her scores updated they went up by an average of 45 points.

1. Transunion report doesn't show FICO scores, unless it's a report from MyFICO.

2. Dropping utilization from 31% to 26% would NEVER cause a score drop in any FICO scoring model, and in most if not all scoring models would cause a score INCREASE.

3. An Amex charge card is not factored into FICO utilization at all, except to a limited extent on some of the older scoring models.

So you need to first be sure you're talking about an actual score drop in a FICO score, and then you need to find out what really caused the score drop, because it certainly was not the drop in utilization.