Please help looked everywhere for the answer. Credit Score Dropped from 692 to 647 in one month!

[Anonymous]

I would really appreciate some help.  I have worked on my credit for the last 3-4 years very diligently paying off old debt and paying everything on time. My credit use to  be 505 and as of November 25, 2009 was 692 eight points from 700's. So I have worked very hard to get it to where it is right now.

I monitor my credit with experian every month. I check to make sure everything is accurate all of my accounts are current with an OK status. I have one current account in collections with West Asset Management that I have been making monthly installments on for the last 2yrs never late actually automatic out of bank account. It has always shown on my CR as Key Derogo which was fine because the last 1yr 1/2 has not seemed to effect my score because I have so many other positive things.

I am unable to PIF because it is just under 5k the original debt was 7k from a medical exam. A complete fluke at the time a student no job no income. The hospital was suppose to put me on a payment plan to payoff bill. Then later stated if I did not have balance pif in 4mths they would send me to collections even if I was still paying on it. At the time I was uneducated about those things.

So this is where I need the help earlier last month December 20th to be exact I checked my report and my score had changed to 647. I noticed the collection account I had been paying on was closed with an OK status. There was a new one with an updated date of Dec/08 with a KD status closed as well. 

I have called experian and they were not able to help. They stated collections should effect you negatively. Then due to the holiday season I have not been able to contact the collections company. I still have auto pay setup on my account to come out the 10th of every month so I will not know if they are still taking payments until then. Last month on the 10th it did come out.  So if anyone can help me resolve this I would be ultimately thankful. 

I am soo broken hearted by being sooo close to the 700's status. I thought I would be there by January for sure.


edit: paragraphs added --hauling

Message Edited by haulingthescoreup on 01-04-2009 05:27 PM

[haulingthescoreup]

Hi, Vanessa, welcome to the forums!

Where did you get your "credit score"? It sounds like you got it from the Experian monitoring service. If so, it's not a FICO score, but a "FAKO." If these two scores aren't both FICO scores, from the same CRA, then there's no telling why the score changed. It's quite possible that the actual FICO scores didn't change, or that they even got better.

There are many different credit scores floating around, but the only useful ones are FICO's. You can get all three (EQ, TU, and EX) here at the myFICO site. (Be sure to google FICO discount code first.) You can also get your EQ FICO from the Equifax site. You can get your TU FICO from www.transunioncs.com. (Note the cs.) You can get your EX FICO here and only here.

All other scores --those sold by TU and EX from their sites, and those sold by credit monitoring services like TrueCredit, PrivacyMatters, free-credit-report-dot-com, and so forth, are what we call FAKO's. They are created by a different formula than FICO's; they don't track your FICO scores; and they aren't used by lenders.

Save your money and get FICO's.

I'm going to add paragraphs to your post to make for easier reading.

[Anonymous]

Thank you so much. I will do that right away and update you on my findings.

Thanks for the paragrahs I was so upset about the situation.