DORMANT...

[Anonymous]

Hi
I'm building my credit to purchase a home. I have four cards. 3 of which I recently paid off. The fourth is an Open Sky card that expired 6 months ago (but had a zero balance the entire time). I called them no less than five times for a replacement card. Every time they send one out it had an expired date on it. They send four of these like this. I finally got one with the proper date about three weeks ago. I used it to get gas one time . Paid it off before due date and my score dropped 32 points due to dormant card use?? But the reason it's dormant is because they kept sending expired cards. Do I have any options to get that reversed?

[CreditDunce]

I don't think using a dormant card would cause you to loose points.   I would pull your credit reports to make sure nothing else happened.   E.g. an old baddy being reported, etc.  

[Anonymous]

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@CreditDunce wrote:

I don't think using a dormant card would cause you to loose points.   I would pull your credit reports to make sure nothing else happened.   E.g. an old baddy being reported, etc.  

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Agreed. That's a huge drop for dormant use.

[Anonymous]

No it was that. Says specifically . Nothing else past due.. No Large balance .. No missed payment..etc says right on report here.

[AzaleaB]

You should check your credit report. You don't lose points for dormant card use. It's an alert to insure you are aware of it. At the same time something else changed on your credit report. The alerts are limited and don't report all changes. 

[Neverknewaboutcredit]

I've had the same thing happen to me as well it clearly says what the decrease in points was from, I don't think I will ever understand the scoring system

[SunriseEarth]

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@Anonymous wrote:
Hi
I'm building my credit to purchase a home. I have four cards. 3 of which I recently paid off. The fourth is an Open Sky card that expired 6 months ago (but had a zero balance the entire time). I called them no less than five times for a replacement card. Every time they send one out it had an expired date on it. They send four of these like this. I finally got one with the proper date about three weeks ago. I used it to get gas one time . Paid it off before due date and my score dropped 32 points due to dormant card use?? But the reason it's dormant is because they kept sending expired cards. Do I have any options to get that reversed?

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Where are you retaining your score and reports?

[Anonymous]

Im getting it here at MyFico.com

The exact verbage is "An account that has been inactive for more than six months has become recently active". Then it shows before score and after score. No other activity on this reporting or one before it. I have screenshots but cant load them here in the forum.

[CreditDunce]

What is listed as the trigger isn't necessarily what caused a score change.   Your credit report is constantly changing.  Only a few of the changes are triggers for a score MyFico update.  But all of the changes can cause your score to change.

I am sure there are other changes, but in the OP,  you mentioned that you have paid all of your CC's down to zero.  That would be a change on your report that would cause a score drop.  To test let one CC report a balance of 1-9% of the CL of that CC.  All other CC's should report a zero balance. 

[dawnm72174]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Im getting it here at MyFico.com

The exact verbage is "An account that has been inactive for more than six months has become recently active". Then it shows before score and after score. No other activity on this reporting or one before it. I have screenshots but cant load them here in the forum.

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If you look in your alert settings you'll see one that will notify you if an account that has been "asleep" for X number of months is suddenly active. Your score drop wasn't because you woke the dormant account, something else changed on your report but it didn't trigger an alert. Your MyFICO alerts are set to tell you when you "wake" a sleepy account after 6 months of inactivity. You can set this alert for 3- 6 months, 12 months, 18 months, or 24 months.

Go check out your settings. I'll bet you the check box next to the alert is marked and it's set for 6 months.