Got caught with 0% utilization

[jcooks]

All my cards are 0 balance on the statements except for my Chase Freedom Flex and Amex Gold.  I currently have 2 Capital One cards with roughly $50 on them waiting for those to post so I can have some movements.  Amex Gold just posted a balance of $3500 and paid off immediately as statement was cut.   Chase Freedom Flex posted May 6th with a balance of $52.  I've been doing multiple payments on the CFF as it only has a $700 credit limit.  Very low limit due to me burning Chase in an old charge off, and this is my first card since getting my foot back in the door with them.  It seems that I've accidentally paid off a balance in full and for whatever reason Chase reported it in between statements.  Is this known for them to do that?  My scores also did drop (EX -20 pts).  It shows that I'm not using any revolving credit (even though I am).  Once one of the Cap Ones balance posts, are my scores likely to go up, or would this take a few more months to rebound?

[Slabenstein]

The penalty is for all revolving tradelines (in which the Amex charge card isn't included) reporting a $0 balance, not for showing 0% utilization.  Balance-related metrics are snapshot metrics on all currently available FICO versions, so as soon as at least one of your bankcard revolvers reports a $10+ balance, you'll see any points you lost to the AZ penalty come back.  If you're not going to be making any apps between now and when your Cap1 reports, then it's not anything to worry about, just something to be aware of for the future.

Regarding Chase, they always off-cycle report whenever a card has a $0 balance.

[jcooks]

Thank you!  This will be rough especially with a low credit limit and I'm cycling through it a few times a month.  I will just keep close attention to the balances.  Or just use it for 3 and a half weeks out of the month to ensure I catch it at <10% UTI at statement ending.  My goal is to show Chase that I need a higher CL but without telling them I need a higher CLI.  /cross my fingers hoping this will help me see the unicorn auto CLI from Chase.

[Slabenstein]

If you don't want to worry about managing your Chase payments around avoiding $0 balances, letting $10+ report each month on one other revolver would be enough to make sure you didn't accidentally get the AZ penalty.  You could do this by, e.g., putting a streaming subscription on one of the Cap1's and then pay it each month after the statement posts.  My daily driver is a Chase card, and that's basically how I make sure I never have a problem with it.

[Credit4Growth]

Yep, I do the same as @Slabenstein.
It works for us. Give it a try 😉 and yes, once the Capital One post your scores should increase!

[babygirl1256]

@jcooks Wow, I hope that you recover the EX 20 points soon!!!