Credit Card Fraud

[tufa4311]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Karma has a nice feature where you can click just on the account you want to focus on.  Then there is a link that gives you the option to compare how the account reads in EQ vs. TU.  If I were you, I'd do that and print the results.  You'll want to note the balance in both and the date the the issuer reported it to both.  Then you can forget about it for 35 days and then look again.

Presumably the new balance will be reported by then and your Vantage scores will jump back to where they were.  A similar catastrophic drop and recovery will have happened with FICO 8.

At that point you can decide whether you want to pursue getting the CCC to change the Nov 2015 balance in each of the three CRAs.  You may need a full blown official credit report from ACR to do that.

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With regard to past balances and current monthly reporting - are balances from the past re-updated on a monthly basis based on the reporting from the CCC or do the CRA's simply store them without ever going back to update unless some sort of dispute is made?

[tufa4311]

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@tufa4311 wrote:

The credit card balance has now been adjusted and I am back down to under 5% UTI. Credit Karma will update in 3 days, let's see if I get all 131 points back. My Discover FICO was last updated on 11/12 and my Barclaycard FICO last updated on 11/08 and are at 751 and 753, respectively, thus neither have been affected by the issue, yet...

Will update as to the final outcome on my next FICO updates.

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CK EQ just updated with new balance - jumped 127 points - just under the 131 points lost. Oddly, CK TU, which updated at the same time, still has the old balance - it was not updated - why? In addition, my FICO from Discover, last updated 12/12 dropped from 753 to 716 due to the "%age of Balances is too high on revolving accounts" - the only balance I have reporting is the one account in question, so FICO is now taking into account the 106% UTIL but the hit is no where as hard as I thought it would be. While that one card is at 106%, my overall is still under 10%. FICO and CK really work differently - look at the different weights each place on overall vs individual UTIL.

[Anonymous]

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@tufa4311 wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

Karma has a nice feature where you can click just on the account you want to focus on.  Then there is a link that gives you the option to compare how the account reads in EQ vs. TU.  If I were you, I'd do that and print the results.  You'll want to note the balance in both and the date the the issuer reported it to both.  Then you can forget about it for 35 days and then look again.

Presumably the new balance will be reported by then and your Vantage scores will jump back to where they were.  A similar catastrophic drop and recovery will have happened with FICO 8.

At that point you can decide whether you want to pursue getting the CCC to change the Nov 2015 balance in each of the three CRAs.  You may need a full blown official credit report from ACR to do that.

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With regard to past balances and current monthly reporting - are balances from the past re-updated on a monthly basis based on the reporting from the CCC or do the CRA's simply store them without ever going back to update unless some sort of dispute is made?

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That's a really interesting question.  My guess (but just a guess) is that the answer is somewhere in between.  Something like this:

Once a balance in the past has been submitted, then the CRA will keep that as the "true" recorded balance for that month unless the creditor intentionally resubmits a correction.  In other words, probably your second scenario, except that the word  "dispute" typically means initiating a formal process with the CRA.  I suspect  that you do not need to do that in order to get it changed.  You could just talk to the CRA CCC 3-4 months later, walk them through what happened, and then they can resubmit the change if they want.  

PS.  Hope you have a merry Christmas!

[tufa4311]

Ok, the other has jumped back up:

CK TU 753->619-740

CK EQ 762->628->751

Didn't gain back all the points I lost - at least in CK.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the update.  Watching what happens with credit scores is always a bit like performing an experiment with a dirty test tube.  It's very hard to make sure that nothing has changed between the two points in time except the one thing you think you are "testing.".  In fact in some respects that's impossible, since accounts age a tiny bit.  In the case of CK, which uses Vantage Score, many things could be going on.  I have been told that Vantage is sensitive to the raw dollar amount in your balances, not just the % utilization, so that could be a difference between the two points in time.

I am 99.9% certain that your FICO scores (version 8 and earlier) will totally ignore what your balance might have been 2+ months in the past.  But as we talked about before, the data of that past historical balance will be in your actual credit reports.  It is visible to anyone doing a manual review and it is possible that future scoring models might use it in some way or another.  So should you really want it corrected, you can talk to the CCC about it in a couple months.

PS.  I just noticed that I made a typo in my last post.  I was typing too fast.  I said "CRA" towards the end when I meant CCC (credit card company).  I corrected it with a strikethru and put CCC in red.

[tufa4311]

Need a little guidance here. So now all the funds have been returned. I'll need to ensure the history is fixed. Looking at past credit reports there is nothing about "highest balance" as shown on CK, there is nothing but the current balance. Currently, is there anywhere in our credit report/credit file held at the CB's that shows past balances/highest balance or anything like it, even if they don;t show it to us, do they have it?

Second, would a credit check by, a mortgage co, for example, in any way see that 100%+ UTIL or balance from the past? It was mentioned that they would see it in a manual review - what is that, where do they get that, is that just what the CB's store from past data, how is that fixed, is that past data updated each time thus it's fixed at the credit card co or is it stored at the CB annd not updated?

So many questions...I have the right to get this fixed I just don't know where these data points are and how to fix them.

[Anonymous]

My comments in blue below,

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@tufa4311 wrote:

Need a little guidance here. So now all the funds have been returned. I'll need to ensure the history is fixed. Looking at past credit reports there is nothing about "highest balance" as shown on CK, there is nothing but the current balance. Currently, is there anywhere in our credit report/credit file held at the CB's that shows past balances/highest balance or anything like it, even if they don;t show it to us, do they have it?

Yes they have it.  If you get a full blown credit report, like the sort you would get at AnnualCreditReport.com, it is in there.  It will show you the reported balance for every distinct month stretching back quite a while, at least 24 months I think.  It also shows you how much of that balance you later paid on.

Third-party credit monitoring services that provide credit reports (like Credit Karma or myFICO) don't necessarily include that level of detail.  But if you get a full credit report from ACR you'll see it.

Second, would a credit check by, a mortgage co, for example, in any way see that 100%+ UTIL or balance from the past?

Yes. 

It was mentioned that they would see it in a manual review - what is that, where do they get that,

That is where a human from the lender pulls your credit reports, and looks at each account on each report.  Manual reviews are in contrast to an automated review (like a credit scoring algorithm does).  Think of it like the difference between manual and automatic transmission on a car.  With manual, you are using your hands to shift into each gear -- the human driver has much more control over exactly what the car does,

is that just what the CB's store from past data, how is that fixed, is that past data updated each time thus it's fixed at the credit card co or is it stored at the CB annd not updated?

Both.  The CCC has a record of all your past balances for the best few years.  And the CRA, once the balance is submitted for a particular month, has that balance stored in its database.  I would assume that the CRA will not make a change to its database unless the CCC goes out of its way to ask them to do that. 

So many questions...I have the right to get this fixed I just don't know where these data points are and how to fix them.

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[tufa4311]

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@Anonymous wrote:

My comments in blue below,

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@tufa4311 wrote:

Yes they have it.  If you get a full blown credit report, like the sort you would get at AnnualCreditReport.com, it is in there.  It will show you the reported balance for every distinct month stretching back quite a while, at least 24 months I think.  It also shows you how much of that balance you later paid on.

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@tufa4311 wrote:
ok so as long as I get the full credit report clean to the point where I don't see that balance any further than that it was cleaned correctly by the CCC?

[Anonymous]

Yes.  But exactly how they resubmit (to each CRA) a balance that happened three months ago -- this I don't know.  If it was resubmitting the current balance that would be easy.  But that is not what you are asking, so it's interesting.

The first thing you should do is to pull a fill credit report for one of the three CRAs do that you can see what it looks like to see all these historical balances.

And then the next thing is to talk to the CCC and make sure you can convince them to be willing to change it.  Remember that your balance really was 106% of its credit limit.  That was truthfully reported to the CRA.  It's just that you didn't personally make the charges that caused the balance to be so high.

[tufa4311]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Remember that your balance really was 106% of its credit limit.  That was truthfully reported to the CRA.  It's just that you didn't personally make the charges that caused the balance to be so high.

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Sure, but while this follows the letter of the law, it doesn't follow the spirit. As we know, a credit report is something that anyone should be able to use to get a *accuracte* picture of one's credit history; seeing that balance would not be an accurate picture of my credit history.

I'll continue to work on it and keep updating.