topic Re: 6 point gain after Goodwill deletion in Understanding FICO® Scoring

6 point gain after Goodwill deletion

Looneytoons — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 17:58:36 GMT

Hello to the group. I've been lurking here for several months and wanted to say thanks for the great information here, and to give a DP on a goodwill deletion. I used the suggestions here to request a goodwill deletion on a 6 year 1 month old collection account that had beed paid in full. It took about 3 months, starting in December 2025, and today I was amazed to see the item deleted from my EX file. I personalized one of the letter formats here, amiled 2 letters a week after the first letter with a 3 week delay, and it WORKED! The collection agency is CCS in Massachusetts. I got a 6 point bump in FICO 8 going from 681 to 687. No other derogs on my file. Thick file, with 12 open tradelines, 10 revolving and 2 installments. I have high aggregate utilization at ~44% and several cards in the 60-65% band. After one more update cycle I plan to refi into a personal loan as the high interest rates are a killer. Thanks to everyone who posts here, and I want to encourage everyone to use the techniques here. With some patience and determination, you can get to your goals!

Re: 6 point gain after Goodwill deletion

JoeRockhead — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 18:11:27 GMT

Congratulations on the GW success and welcome to the forum.

Re: 6 point gain after Goodwill deletion

BrutalBodyShots — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 07:23:10 GMT

Something sounds amiss here.

The presence of a single collection means dirty scorecard assignment. If that's your only negative item, removing it would take you from a dirty file to a clean file. On FICO 8, that shift in most cases is going to equate to a significant score gain. Typically we're talking 50+ points, often something in the 70-80 range. If you only saw 6 points, to me it suggests your file is still dirty / there's still something negative present. Or, based on your before and after scores, they are suggestive that the collection may not have been present in the first place. Slightly elevated utilization like you referenced would put scores down into the upper 600s sure, but a collection even if aged should have push them doen into the low 600s.