Strange response on credit reports

bass_playr · ‎11-29-2021

So, I've been working on paying down CC balances. These are just paying down balances, I am not closing any accounts.

Paid off about $220 on one card, the account is in good standing and still open, but TU and EQ both dropped my FICO 8 score 5 points each. EX kept the score the same. There are zero changes to my credit other than paying down this balance to 0. What gives? Isn't your score supposed to increase when you decrease utilization?

Incidentally, in the middle of the month I paid down a $290 balance, and just like this one, that card is still open with a 0 balance. EX increased my score one point over this change, the other two did not change at all. And last month, I paid down $200. When that happened, EQ and TU went up 7 points. This makes no sense. I thought that decreasing your utilization while still keeping accounts open would generally increase your score. These scores are from myfico reports.

During this time, no new collections accounts showed up. No late pays showed up. No accounts were closed. No new hard pulls. All open accounts are in good standing. No new data on my reports at all aside from paying down balances.

FireMedic1 · ‎11-29-2021

How many cards are reporting out of the total cards. You been here a while. Some things dont make sense as we know when it comes to comments. I believe its the back and forth of individual util %'s jumping all over as its being paid down. Your not the only one. Ive seen it to. Like what gives here. But on the other hand. Its only 5 pts.

bass_playr · ‎11-29-2021

Thanks for reply, all four cards report. The last time I had a late pay on anything was over 5 years ago, so I'm in this mode to really improve credit. We are anticipating a rather expensive vehicle purchase in the coming months (spring 2022) and that 0% interest is what I am after.

I did have two small old collections pop up several months ago on my reports, but thanks to EE it is now gone from all three. So the only negative marks I have are a couple of 30 day lates from 2015. Goodwill did not work on those, it was with Credit Acceptance and they did not respond at all. So, I'm hovering in the 660-670 range and really want to find a way to get above 700. The only other thing I can think of to increase my scores is paying down revolving balances further.

My total revolving credit is $7,000, I'm currently carrying balance totaling $2900 among these cards. So that's my big push recently.

FireMedic1 · ‎11-30-2021

Glad your tackling the balances. Having all accounts report is almost in a way the same as having no accounts report. Once 1 of them is PIF. You'll see those points back and then some. Then when it gets down to 1 reporting that will help too. Then you broke the less than 50% reporting. On the back end. You know about util. So no explanation there. Good Luck!