Lowering utilization alone should never lower scores unless there's something else going on such as maybe your usage went down but the number of cards with a balance increased, or perhaps you had a serious delinquency, 60 day late or worse 2+ years ago and you've now been moved back to a better scorecard.... we'd need more information about what your history has been, along with your current usage, limits etc to help pinpoint what might have caused the massive (joke) points loss.
@cnorth wrote:I was hoping paying down some credit cards would increase my score and it usually does however the last update shows it went down by 1 point. Not a huge deal but why wouldnt lowering the balance on cc be a good thing? Experian lowered my score -1 and Equifax did nothing. +0 change
1. There's no connection between the loss of a point and the lowering of your credit card balances.
2. A 1 point difference is not significant.
3. MyFICO alerts don't provide reasons for a score change. There are certain events which trigger MyFICO alerts. If there happens to be any difference between your present score at that particular bureau and the previous score reported to you from that bureau, the score change is tacked on to the alert. There is not necessarily any connection at all between the score change and the alert substance.
MyFICO explains this as follows:
Why did my score go up when I got an alert for something negative (or why did my score go down when I got an alert for something positive)?
The short answer: Your FICO® Score may change because of other events not monitored by an alert.
Whenever we send you a credit alert, we also send an updated FICO Score. To ensure you get the most current score, we calculate it based on your entire credit report at that point in time—not just the new information on the alert. This means your new score may reflect other changes that are outside of the things we watch for (see everything we monitor).
Sometimes you may see your score increase when you think it should’ve decreased, and vice-versa, but you’ll always have your most up-to-date and accurate score.
https://support.myfico.com/hc/en-us/articles/360038084633
Seriously, a thread based on a 1 point drop on one CRA and no score change on another! 