Balance Reporting to EquiFax

[Anonymous]

Whenever I use aany of my bank issued Credit Cards, they immediately report a balance to the Credit Bureau, e.g, on my Wachovia Visa, I had a balance increase from $250 to $500 on 12/7.  Then, 2 weeks later, I had a balnce increase that took it to $1600.  That was also reported to the Credit Bureau. Each time, my Fico score dropped by one point.   I paid the card off in full on Dec 28th (account has been zeroed out for 8 business days, yet no report to the Credit Bureau. 

I have had this happen on 3 other credit cards.  I always pay my cards in full at the end of the month.  If I knew when each bank reported acct info, then I would make sure to have a zero balance on that date.  They only seem to report actual balances, and do so on the day of the actual increase and not just once a month.  It sems that zero balances must be there for 30 days or more before they are actually picked up.  that hardly seems fair.

[Anonymous]

They should only report the balance that shows on your statement.

[Anonymous]

I am glad my creditors don't do weekly reporting- that would drive me up the wall-

This is really interesting as EQ actually disikes multiple updates in a single month-

[Anonymous]

Understood...it used to be that I knew when each bank reported the monthly balances.  Now it seems they report ever time there is a balance increase.  There may be a balance increase threshold that says if an acct suddenly increases by X number of dollars, generate a new update to the Credit bureau.  If that is so, then I want them to do the same when an acct is zeroed out.  Otherwise, the consumer is at a disadvantage.  But on myfico reports, it does show Wachovia reporting a balance increase twice in one month to Equifax.

I also noted that I had a zero balnce card that I hadn't used all year, and when the annual fee charge kicked in, fico went crazy and dropped my score 3 points....reason...using a card that had not been used.  Well, it hadn't actually been used...it was the annual fee.  I really need to just drop that card, but now that I've paid the fee, and it is an old card with a long credit history, I may not want to do that.

[Anonymous]

You must be in pretty good shape-

My FICO changes never seem to be in the single digits-

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lexus4me wrote:

Understood...it used to be that I knew when each bank reported the monthly balances.  Now it seems they report ever time there is a balance increase.  There may be a balance increase threshold that says if an acct suddenly increases by X number of dollars, generate a new update to the Credit bureau.  If that is so, then I want them to do the same when an acct is zeroed out.  Otherwise, the consumer is at a disadvantage.  But on myfico reports, it does show Wachovia reporting a balance increase twice in one month to Equifax.

I also noted that I had a zero balnce card that I hadn't used all year, and when the annual fee charge kicked in, fico went crazy and dropped my score 3 points....reason...using a card that had not been used.  Well, it hadn't actually been used...it was the annual fee.  I really need to just drop that card, but now that I've paid the fee, and it is an old card with a long credit history, I may not want to do that.

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[Anonymous]

That is strange.

The only time I have had a balance report out of the ordinary is when I asked for a CLI with my BofA Visa.  They reported the balance of the day of the CLI and not the statement balance.  When I called and asked why they couldn't answer, and they thought it was weird that I knew when my account statement cut and I paid it a few days before to prevent the high ult%.  It threw my fico's off for a month.  It was only for BofA, not the other accounts I got CLI's with.

[Anonymous]

The lady at BofA laughed when I told her I knew becuase I pull my credit report everyday

I don't have a problem do I?

[Anonymous]

Noooooooooooooo, RGordon, you don't have a problem at all!

You just have the pull-my-credit-report-everyday syndrome. LOL.

[haulingthescoreup]

As I posted elsewhere, Discover posted on 12/18 (our statement date) and again on 12/28, for no reason whatsoever that I can figure out. My TU score dropped 34 points for one extra CC reporting; no change on EQ, 1 point on EX.

I know that it will turn around again next cycle --and I dern well better get every one of those points back!!! --but I sure would like to know if I will be able to rely on normal reporting dates. Until I pick up a couple more cards in March-April, I can only have one report a balance, regardless of util, or else TU will go nuts again.

[Anonymous]

LOL RG -

The same thing happened to me with BOA when I switched to their Worldpoints card.

I didn't expect for them to report the balance 2 weeks prior to statement closing. I saw it within 24 hours on TC and called BOA the following morning.

The CSR was surprised that I had visibility to the change in such a short period of time.