Sudden unexplained FAKO point drop

[Anonymous]

I'll preface this by saying that this is all on what CreditKarma is reporting, and I have not run a FICO report to verfiy if the FICO score is effected, but I was looking for information before that.

So the story is that I got a point decrease email from CK today, so I hopped on expecting maybe a point or two, but saw a 38 point drop on both my TransUnion and my Equifax. 

In the "see what changed" tab:

Increases:

• 1 card which was at $0 reported new activitiy of $39 - I didn't realize the annual fee hit until after it reported, normally i pay it before it can hit the statment.
• 1 card shows a blanace increase of $361 - a ~3.6% increase

Decreases:

• loan decreased $288
• auto lease decreased $859 (for some reason two months hit at once)
• loan decreased $179

So all of my decreases largely outweigh the increases, and increases have only ever effected me minimally in the past, so I am so very confused. The increase didn't put me over a utilization threshold, though that card is running a little high on utilization (it's one of my lower limits and I use it for home improvement, so it generally keeps a balance with 0% interest promos running).

I guess I'm just looking to see if I should ride this out, or start dumping money onto card to get them paid down and get that score back up. My lease is up in May, and where my credit was at before this drop had me comfortable, but I'm worried about renewing and possibily not getting Teir1 like I got on my last lease. Again, I know this isn't my FICO Auto, and I do plan to pull that soon-ish, but now I'm wondering if I should grab all my scores to see if I need to do some crazy work before renewing a lease.

[Slabenstein]

In and of itself, I wouldn't worry about a Vantage score change.  It's a different algo than FICO, so score changes to one don't imply anything about the other, and it won't be used to determine your lease tier, as you're aware.  I don't know much about VS scoring metrics, but from observation of my own and my spouse's VS scores, it doesn't seem to have any revolving util thresholds.  Rather, it freaks out with bipolar point gains/losses whenever there is an agg revolving util change of any amount.  Whether that's the source of your VS score drop, I have no idea, but it's a possibility since one of your revolving balances changed.  (To my small observation, VS is unaffected by installment balance changes.)  If you want to see some of your FICOs for cheap, including EX AU8, you can do a $1 trial at CCT to see where you stand.  Just make sure to downgrade to the free version before the trial period ends so you don't get hit with the monthly charge.

[Anonymous]

To echo the reply above, since you're talking VS3 scores don't sweat the drops.  I doubt your Fico scores reacted in the same way.

A few points though in attempt to partially try to consider what the algorithm may be seeing:  First, you took a $0 balance account to a non-zero reported balance.  This obviously results in an additional account with a balance.  Maybe this is something VS3 is sensitive to.  Second, you balance increase you said was on a low limit card.  Was that utilization percentage increase that your referenced overall or on that individual card?  I'm thinking it's overall, because you said the card was a low limit one and a $300+ balance change equating to 3.6% would make it a $10k card or so just shooting from the hip.  That being said, it's possible that you crossed a threshold on that individual card, be it a percentage or dollar metric seen by the algorithm.  Last, you spoke about 3 loans reporting lower balances no doubt due to the monthly payments received.  I'm not sure if VS3 considers loans similarly to Fico, but if so one rarely will receive even a single Fico point from regular monthly loan payments.  Installment loan utilization is far less meaningful than revolving utilization.  Therefore, your $300-$400 in revolving balance increases could impact your scores more than (say) $1000-$2000 in loan dollars paydown.  It's just important to know that those dollars (revolving vs installment) are not created equal when it comes to scoring criteria.

[Iusedtolurk]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

To echo the reply above, since you're talking VS3 scores don't sweat the drops.  I doubt your Fico scores reacted in the same way.

A few points though in attempt to partially try to consider what the algorithm may be seeing:  First, you took a $0 balance account to a non-zero reported balance.  This obviously results in an additional account with a balance.  Maybe this is something VS3 is sensitive to.  Second, you balance increase you said was on a low limit card.  Was that utilization percentage increase that your referenced overall or on that individual card?  I'm thinking it's overall, because you said the card was a low limit one and a $300+ balance change equating to 3.6% would make it a $10k card or so just shooting from the hip.  That being said, it's possible that you crossed a threshold on that individual card, be it a percentage or dollar metric seen by the algorithm.  Last, you spoke about 3 loans reporting lower balances no doubt due to the monthly payments received.  I'm not sure if VS3 considers loans similarly to Fico, but if so one rarely will receive even a single Fico point from regular monthly loan payments.  Installment loan utilization is far less meaningful than revolving utilization.  Therefore, your $300-$400 in revolving balance increases could impact your scores more than (say) $1000-$2000 in loan dollars paydown.  It's just important to know that those dollars (revolving vs installment) are not created equal when it comes to scoring criteria.

---

Interesting and logical assumption about the installment paydowns as a non-factor/not significant variable in affecting score change as much as a possible increase in revolving account utilization occuring.

[dunn2500]

credit karma and experian are behind FICO in scoring......i have all 3 and CK and EX seem to get updates and reports quite a bit later than FICO.......they are always behind in my experience