topic Re: FICO Equifax question in Understanding FICO® Scoring

FICO Equifax question

BCarumba — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 03:11:37 GMT

Equifax says my score has 3 strikes against it and that's why it dropped. When I clicked on the question mark, it cited these reasons:

What is hurting your score

Lack of recent non-mortgage loan information
Few accounts paid on time
High credit usage
Accounts with balances

The ONLY one that is correct is that I have a monthly credit card bill with a balance that I pay in full every month. None of the others apply.

I tried to initiate a dispute but Equifax doesn't haven't a section where I can dispute these incorrect reasons.

Thank you.

Re: FICO Equifax question

GZG — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 03:52:26 GMT

@BCarumba wrote:
Equifax says my score has 3 strikes against it and that's why it dropped. When I clicked on the question mark, it cited these reasons:

What is hurting your score
Lack of recent non-mortgage loan information
Few accounts paid on time
High credit usage
Accounts with balances

The ONLY one that is correct is that I have a monthly credit card bill with a balance that I pay in full every month. None of the others apply.

I tried to initiate a dispute but Equifax doesn't haven't a section where I can dispute these incorrect reasons.

Thank you.

the reasons are there to show you why you don't have a perfect score, they aren't saying you're doing anything wrong or there's anything wrong with your report or score

where did you get this score/reasons?

only having one credit card would make all of these reasons true:

Few accounts paid on time
High credit usage
Accounts with balances

Re: FICO Equifax question

Horseshoez — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 03:57:24 GMT

@BCarumba wrote:
Equifax says my score has 3 strikes against it and that's why it dropped. When I clicked on the question mark, it cited these reasons:

What is hurting your score
Lack of recent non-mortgage loan information
Few accounts paid on time
High credit usage
Accounts with balances

The ONLY one that is correct is that I have a monthly credit card bill with a balance that I pay in full every month. None of the others apply.

I tried to initiate a dispute but Equifax doesn't haven't a section where I can dispute these incorrect reasons.

Thank you.

Let me guess, you're fussing about a Vantage score. Yes, no? Assuming I'm correct, Vantage scores are irrelevant so why do you even care?

Re: FICO Equifax question

Zoostation1 — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 04:01:51 GMT

@BCarumbaReason codes can't be disputed. They're not actually part of your credit report and as someone else already said they don't automatically mean you're doing something wrong with how you're using credit. They exist to show you what's impacting your scores (you can have multiple negative reason codes and still have a very good or excellent score. If you're paying off your cards monthly in full and are either current on a loan or don't have a loan I wouldn't worry about it.

Re: FICO Equifax question

Thomas_Thumb — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 04:50:46 GMT

@BCarumba wrote:
Equifax says my score has 3 strikes against it and that's why it dropped. When I clicked on the question mark, it cited these reasons:

What is hurting your score
Lack of recent non-mortgage loan information
Few accounts paid on time
High credit usage
Accounts with balances

The ONLY one that is correct is that I have a monthly credit card bill with a balance that I pay in full every month. None of the others apply.

I tried to initiate a dispute but Equifax doesn't haven't a section where I can dispute these incorrect reasons.

Thank you.

If you only have a few accounts then by definition you would have few accounts paid on time.

If you have no open loans or only an open mortgage then you would have a lack of recent non mortgage information.

If your aggregate revolving balance is over 9% then you have high credit use. (Note: if you have only 1 card then card utilization equals aggregate utilization).

Not sure what the accounts with balances is referring to. However, I suspect it relates to % of revolving accounts with balances. Either 50% or over 50% triggers this reason statement. If you only have 1 card and it reports a balance, you are at 100%.

Side note: It is ALWAYS better scorewise to report one card with a small balance than all zero balances. This is true even if you only have one card.

As mentioned above, reason statements can not be disputed. Actually, credit score can't be disputed either. What can be disputed is information in your credit reports.

Re: FICO Equifax question

FicoMike0 — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 04:27:38 GMT

Welcome to the forum.

You'll get better answers from more details. You don't give before and after scores. I'm going to assume the only thing on your report is a single credit card that you put each month. Then,

Lack of recent non-mortgage loan information

Is correct, you have no loan, you lose points there.

Few accounts paid on time

You only have one account, lose points

High credit usage

If your balance posts above 29% of credit limit, you lose points. To control this, you need to pay it down before it posts or increase your cl.

Accounts with balances

Since your one account is posting a balance, that's 100%, too many, you lose points. Btw if you pay it to zero, you'll get a zero balance penalty, lol.

Based on the assume I made, you need at least two more cards, two of which always post zero, and an installment loan

Btw you can't dispute the reasons, only the data.

If you post more detail im sure you'll get better help than this. In the meantime, search azeo, ssl and 'score cards'.

Re: FICO Equifax question

BCarumba — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 07:17:23 GMT

I have no idea what you mean by fussing about a Vantage score.

Re: FICO Equifax question

Horseshoez — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 12:43:23 GMT

The way your original post was written it implied you were looking at an Equifax Vantage score, if so, then ignore it and any annotations which come with it, they are irrelevant.

Re: FICO Equifax question

FlaDude — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 14:15:51 GMT

@BCarumba wrote:
I have no idea what you mean by fussing about a Vantage score.

Scores provided by sites like Credit Karma, Nerdwallet and may others are not FICO scores, they are created by a different scoring model called Vantage. Vantage scores are not widely used by lenders. Can you verify where you are getting your scores from?

Re: FICO Equifax question

Barkius — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 17:24:49 GMT

I still don't understand why people are deeming vantage scores as irrelevant. Synchrony uses vantage 4 and pretty much every single consumer credit portal gives vantage scores. So if you tell people to disregard vantage scores, number one they're not going to do well with synchrony and, number two, most people will simply leave to find someone who will actually address their questions.

The old concept of vantage being a fako score is a bit antiquated in my opinion. Vantage is relevant because it's what people see, It's cheap to update therefore it's frequently updated and hence if you dismiss all of them for caring about it then you're going to be disregarding a lot of questions and concerns from a major segment of consumers.

It's fine to educate people on the differences but to say "well I'm not going to answer your question because you're referencing a vantage score rather than a FICO score and most lenders don't use Vantage scores" It's just going to make people go somewhere else. It's simply not helpful.

Re: FICO Equifax question

Horseshoez — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 18:07:13 GMT

@Barkius wrote:
I still don't understand why people are deeming vantage scores as irrelevant. Synchrony uses vantage 4 and pretty much every single consumer credit portal gives vantage scores. So if you tell people to disregard vantage scores, number one they're not going to do well with synchrony and, number two, most people will simply leave to find someone who will actually address their questions.

The old concept of vantage being a fako score is a bit antiquated in my opinion. Vantage is relevant because it's what people see, It's cheap to update therefore it's frequently updated and hence if you dismiss all of them for caring about it then you're going to be disregarding a lot of questions and concerns from a major segment of consumers.

It's fine to educate people on the differences but to say "well I'm not going to answer your question because you're referencing a vantage score rather than a FICO score and most lenders don't use Vantage scores" It's just going to make people go somewhere else. It's simply not helpful.

Vantage scores from the most commonly used web sites which provide "Free" scores are Vantage 3.0. Given that scoring model is basically not used by any underwriter it is irrelevant, hence, it should be ignored. Regarding Synchrony, they use Vantage 4.0, a score which, with few exceptions, is not available to the general public.

I maintain Vantage = FAKO.

Re: FICO Equifax question

FlaDude — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 20:49:15 GMT

@Barkius wrote:
I still don't understand why people are deeming vantage scores as irrelevant. Synchrony uses vantage 4 and pretty much every single consumer credit portal gives vantage scores.

I agree that Vantage 4 scores are starting to gain some traction, and with the expected changes with Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac using Vantage 4 scores for mortgages, they will become more important. The fact still stands that even though the various portals show Vantage 3 scores, those scores have little to no bearing on one's ability to get credit. My understanding is that the portals use Vantage because it is cheaper for them, but I think they do a disservice to the public which often doesn't realize that the scores presented are only a rough gauge of their FICO scores, which is what the lenders are looking at.

CK and other portals are great for monitoring credit files to see what changes are happening and watch for incorrect info, but the scores don't mean much. Hopefully the portals will start upgrading to Vantage 4 as that score gains relevance.

Re: FICO Equifax question

FicoMike0 — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 01:06:57 GMT

@Barkius wrote:
I still don't understand why people are deeming vantage scores as irrelevant. Synchrony uses vantage 4 and pretty much every single consumer credit portal gives vantage scores. So if you tell people to disregard vantage scores, number one they're not going to do well with synchrony and, number two, most people will simply leave to find someone who will actually address their questions.
it's a self fulfilling prophecy. We don't care about vantage because we think it doesn't matter. Since we don't care, we don't put out The effort to know about it. We can't tell you what we don't know.
The old concept of vantage being a fako score is a bit antiquated in my opinion. Vantage is relevant because it's what people see, It's cheap to update therefore it's frequently updated and hence if you dismiss all of them for caring about it then you're going to be disregarding a lot of questions and concerns from a major segment of consumers.
the fact people see vantage on ck doesn't make it relevant. Seeing that your approval is based on it does. Right now, that's only sync. One of 100. We mostly worry about the 99.

It's fine to educate people on the differences but to say "well I'm not going to answer your question because you're referencing a vantage score rather than a FICO score and most lenders don't use Vantage scores" It's just going to make people go somewhere else. It's simply not helpful.
I have learned one thing about v3. They do not count closed accounts in age calculations, fico does.

Re: FICO Equifax question

AyaMai — Sun, 21 Apr 2024 12:50:09 GMT

@FicoMike0 wrote:
@Barkius wrote:
I still don't understand why people are deeming vantage scores as irrelevant. Synchrony uses vantage 4 and pretty much every single consumer credit portal gives vantage scores. So if you tell people to disregard vantage scores, number one they're not going to do well with synchrony and, number two, most people will simply leave to find someone who will actually address their questions.
it's a self fulfilling prophecy. We don't care about vantage because we think it doesn't matter. Since we don't care, we don't put out The effort to know about it. We can't tell you what we don't know.
The old concept of vantage being a fako score is a bit antiquated in my opinion. Vantage is relevant because it's what people see, It's cheap to update therefore it's frequently updated and hence if you dismiss all of them for caring about it then you're going to be disregarding a lot of questions and concerns from a major segment of consumers.
the fact people see vantage on ck doesn't make it relevant. Seeing that your approval is based on it does. Right now, that's only sync. One of 100. We mostly worry about the 99.

It's fine to educate people on the differences but to say "well I'm not going to answer your question because you're referencing a vantage score rather than a FICO score and most lenders don't use Vantage scores" It's just going to make people go somewhere else. It's simply not helpful.
I have learned one thing about v3. They do not count closed accounts in age calculations, fico does.

The members are here to help you, my advice for you is to listen to them, you are not obligated to agree with them, at the end of the day you will learn something even a fraction of the reponses to your post or others. I appreciate the members who took the time to respond to my posts, very thankful, steered me to think differently when it comes using cards on a daily basis. Not every memebers has the same personality when it comes to their responses to a post, to me it would be boring.