This is so exhausting and frustrating. I've been dealing with this since February in one form or another.
My Ch 7 BK discharged in March 2024 and I'm doing very well with my rebuild. But for some reason my Experian score is remaining 60-80 points lower than TU and Equifax. I have discovered the reason is Experian is reporting inaccurate information to third party vendors (like MyFico). Before filing BK every payment was on time, no lates, and a 20+ year history of ontime payments. Despite that Experian is reporting "Charge Off" and "90 day late" in the month I filed on 17 different accounts from my BK. Transunion and Equifax are correctly reporting them current until the BK.
Since FICO scores are derived on the FICO side this means inaccurate Experian information is affecting the Experian score. The issue is Experian is basically "double penalizing" me. When I look at my score and what's hurting it all three bureaus note "negative items" (the Bankruptcy). But Experian is also noting "Bad payment history" and "Recent missed payment". This is incorrect. These don't appear as an item affecting my TU and Equifax scores (correctly).
The problem is on the Experian website these negatives don't show up. The customer facing Experian data is correct. They show current "Never late" until the BK. So when I tried disputing these online with Experian they just said "Disputed item does not appear on report" and closed it. For 17 items. I disputed again in writing and sent them certified mail a package describing in detail the problem. While their website is correct there is a back-end data issue of some sort that is reporting these as 90-days late and charge off in addition to the BK to third party vendors. This is lowering my Experian score.
After sending the dispute to Experian they sent me the same canned reply "Disputed item not does not appear on report" and closed it. They also only did this for the first item on the list of 17 accounts I sent them. So they basically ignored the other 16 accounts. I filed a CFPB complaint last week. I will hopefully get a reply within 15 days. This is beyond frustrating.
I asked for specific things in resolution.
• Determine whether any of the 17 accounts was actually 30, 60, or 90 days delinquent before or at the relevant
reporting period. (They were not).
• Determine whether a charge-off actually occurred on each affected account, rather than treating the bankruptcy
discharge itself as proof of a charge-off. (There was not a charge off).
• Identify the source of any "Charge Off/Other Derog," "CO," or "90 days late" information associated with the affected
Experian tradelines. (Experian back-end data issue being reported to third party vendors).
• Correct or delete any inaccurate derogatory payment-history information and ensure that information Experian
provides to third parties is consistent with the accurate account history. (Fix the back-end issue so correct data is reported).
• Provide written investigation results for each of the 17 disputed tradelines. (Don't just do the first one and drop the rest).
• If Experian maintains that any charge-off or 90-day delinquency is accurate, identify the records supporting that
conclusion and explain how it can be reconciled with Experian's own "Never late" disclosure.
Attached screenshots.
1. Experian FICO page showing items hurting my score.
2. MyFICO report page showing the inaccurate Experian charge off.
3. MyFICO report page showing the inaccurate 90-day late payment.
4. Experian website report page showing none of this but noting Never Late.
Rebuild Started March 2024
@CaptainConcorde I was in the same position as you when I filed BK a decade ago: I went into BK with no derogs. The three credit cards that were IIB showed on my MyFICO as
This is correct, as far as it goes: A BK is an "Other Derogatory" and that is how Experian shows the BK in these presentations. 90 Day Late/Charge Offs/BK are top level derogs. The slash is not an "and", it's an "and/or".
What I am not clear on from your post is what the score differences are between the FICO 8 you get from Experian and the FICO 8 you get from MyFICO?
You say it appears correct to you on the Experian site but their are issues with the way it is displayed and scored on MyFICO. If both places are showing the same score I would step past the way MyFICO is presenting the data and dig into why Experian is scoring your record more harshly than Equifax and TransUnion. Is the data the same for all three?
I'm not sure what your complaint will result in, but I am quite curious to see how you make out. Please keep us posted. Thank you.
Experian doesn't have its own score. They use the score FICO generates. It pulls the score from FICO. The FICO score is based on data Experian sends it. Data showing a late payment (the false 90 day late) and the other derogatory (the charge-off).
So the back-end data that Experian is sending to FICO, which FICO is utilizing to create the score, is different from the report Experian has posted on its customer portal. The report on the Experian website doesn't relate at all to the FICO score. That's the issue.
How can Experian be reporting no lates or charge offs on their website report while at the same time sending a report with lates and charge offs to FICO and other vendors? They can't. It's a data issue of some sort. That's the crux of the dispute and complaint and why the resolution I requested includes them explaining why they're showing one thing on their report while reporting something else to FICO.
The items hurting the score are thus incorrect. Without them they'd only show the negative item (the BK).
I did a lot of reading describing how FICO calculates the score for each bureau. Experian is reporting false data to outside vendors (including FICO). Without that false data the score would likely be in the range of the other two bureaus.
@CaptainConcorde wrote:Experian doesn't have its own score. They use the score FICO generates. It pulls the score from FICO. The FICO score is based on data Experian sends it. Data showing a late payment (the false 90 day late) and the other derogatory (the charge-off).
Does the FICO 8 score that you get from the Experian website match the Experian FICO 8 score you get here on MyFICO? If they are the same, then you are getting frustrated with aesthetics.
It is not saying you had a 90 day late, it saying that you had an "Other Derogatory". The "Other Derogatory" is the BK.
The more important question is: Why is the Experian score significantly lower than the TU an EQ scores? What are the differences between the different bureaus data?
I'm not sure I'm explaining it clearly. The screenshot above that shows negative information other derogatory mentions both BK and charge offs. Then there are the other "hurting" factors of payment history and late payments that don't exist. They are in essence "compounding" the negatives.
@CaptainConcorde wrote:I'm not sure I'm explaining it clearly. The screenshot above that shows negative information other derogatory mentions both BK and charge offs. Then there are the other "hurting" factors of payment history and late payments that don't exist. They are in essence "compounding" the negatives.
-Negative Items (The BK, Obviously)
-Bad Payment History (The BK means that you have a "Bad Payment History" even though you were current until the BK was filed. The BK has the same weight and is classified with 90 Day Lates and Charge Offs. It does not mean you have either lates or charge offs, it is just a derogatory in the same class and the reason code is written in shorthand.)
-Recent Missed Payment (Your filing of BK means that the last "payment" status is missed because you were no longer paying.)
I would also remind you that these reason codes are explanatory for the consumer. They are meant to let you know what factors effected your score and they are in order of weight (highest to lowest). There are additional reason codes after these that they don't show you, but which would move up the list if one of the higher ones were to no longer be there. These codes are cryptic and sometimes so poorly worded that only someone who is very familiar with them would be able to tell you what they are actually referring to.
The point is: They are not "compounding" the negatives, they are explaining (poorly, obviously) that your score was negatively effected by the BK in the parts of the algorithm the reason codes address.
I would suggest that you print your Experian Credit Report from experian.com and look at the "What's hurting" part of the score breakdown at the bottom of the printed (Print to file and save it) report. That should show you (mostly) the same reason codes with more explanation for each. mine from about two years after BK looked like this:
Take a look at your "printed" Experian report and see if the reason codes seem more reasonable with the additional exposition. I'm sorry I don't have any earlier ones with a score which would have shown the same reason codes you have. But I hope the example will help you find the information to help you understand what is actually going on.
I don't believe you're seeing how I'm referencing it. The negatives of charge-offs and 90-day late payments (being reported to myfico and other third party vendors) definitly affect the FICO score algorithm. Each one is a separate negative that compounds. Credit scores penalize you on the frequency and volume of negative marks. So I have in 34 negatives on the report (17 accounts with both a false 90-day late and charge off) showing on my reoprt. Late payments. Payment history is 35% of the score. So I'm being docked for those even though all accounts were current. Those still matter even though a BK occurred. They still "count". I'm using the description of how scores are assembled here.
https://www.myfico.com/credit-education/blog/negative-items-equally-bad
Quote: "The more severe, recent or frequent the negative information reported on the credit report, the greater impact it will likely have on a FICO® Score."
The scoring algorithm hits me with a compounding penalty. Just having a BK doesn't erase the prior behavior on the account. Because Experian is reporting these pre-BK accounts with delinquencies (even though they were completely current) the algorithm takes them into account and compounds the penalty to the score. Compare it to a traffic ticket in this analogy. You might have one traffic ticket (a bankruptcy) one day. But imagine the police department innaccurately reports to DMV you also had two other tickets on the very same day for running a stop sign and illegal turn in the same incident. You're going to be penalized for all three tickets not just one. It's the same way of thinking the algorithm that calculates the FICO score works. Multiple negatives compound.
You mentioned "I would also remind you that these reason codes are explanatory for the consumer. They are meant to let you know what factors effected your score and they are in order of weight (highest to lowest). There are additional reason codes after these that they don't show you, but which would move up the list if one of the higher ones were to no longer be there. These codes are cryptic and sometimes so poorly worded that only someone who is very familiar with them would be able to tell you what they are actually referring to."
All of these are weighted because all of them affect the score. So if all of these reasons (90-day lates and charge-offs) really don't exist they are impacting my score in error. Remove them and I would have to believe the score would increase up to the range of where the other two correctly reporting bureaus are.
Both TU and Experian are correctly reporting a BK and nothing else. Because there was nothing else. Those scores are generally increasing equally post-BK. The fact Experian shows CO and 90-days late on the FICO report while showing never-late on time on their own customer facing portal indicates this is a data error of some sort. If you look at my last two screenshots above they are from the FICO report. They show CO and 90-day late from Experian. FICO gets this data from Experian to create the overall FICO report and score.
So Experian is transmitting inaccurate data to third party vendors like FICO. This innaccurate data has the effect of compounding negatives on my score. I need Experian to investigate their reporting to third party vendors and correct it. I imagine if they remove these false negatives, which are part of the 35% payment history, it will result in a score increase.