AZ Penalty and I have questions.

SirMilo · ‎10-10-2020

Well, it was one of those good news bad news days for me today.

I received an email alert yesterday around 1pm from myFico saying that my TU score had changed. The email did not give me any indication of how much it changed or whether it was an increase or decrease. I kept checking my dashboard yesterday to find the alert and/or see a score change. It never showed up in my dashboard and I woke up this morning to find 2 score change alerts in my dashboard. The alert from this morning was from Experian with an 8 point increase for paying my AmEx balance off. The alert from yesterday was from TU and reflected what appears to be a scorecard change since my 2 newest accounts are 365 days old this month:

What a nice thing to wake up to. Unfortunately, the love didn't last long since within 1 hour of seeing this info, another TU alert rolled in, OUCH!:

I paid the balances on all cards before the statement date since I never realized before showing up here 11 days ago that I will be penalized heavily for doing this. I seemingly got lucky that I found myself reporting AZEO last month since I showed a statement balance on my AmEx but paid it before this statement closed. In an attempt to avoid an all zero report, I put a small balance on my BBVA card which had a statement close date 2 days later (closed today) than my card with earliest statement closing date of the month- my Amex. As can be seen above, that was too little, too late with TU. I never thought about my credit reports running different start and end dates and always just assumed (erroniously) reports started at the beginning of the month.

My question is do certain agencies have particular start/end dates which the monthly data is reported as a whole and is it random for every customer? I realize that what I am asking probably isn't very easy to understand since I really don't know how to phrase my question clearly. What I mean is that you can see that TU has recorded score changes for both what I believe to be a scorecard change and an AZ penalty. Neither EX nor EQ has reported any score change for the scorecard (?) or the AZ yet although EX did show an 8 point increase today for paying off the AmEx which I would think indicates that these reports aren't "complete" for the month yet. I am obviously not understanding the start and end dates for my reports from the agencies since there doesn't appear to be any uniformity. I am 100% positive that the AmEx payoff was the determining factor for this TU AZ drop. It appears that TU considers AmEx to be the final card reported for their monthly report even though it has the earliest statement closing date every month. I would say that TU is reporting a full month (for me) from around the 8th-7th (+/- 2 days) according to the way this AZ played out. How do I figure out these dates without falling into this trap again? Do my ACR reports show the last credit line reporting date for the month? I can recover from this on next months report but it sure was disappointing to see that nice increase turn to garbage in an hour.

Anonymous · ‎10-10-2020

The 3 bureaus take different amounts of time to update the same information, typically differing by a couple days each.

At the same time using myFICO to track the 3 has its own delays at times, IME this applies especially to score changes for EQ

Since the 3 typically take different amounts of time to update info, multiple changes/updates of info could mean you may not see an exact parallel/trailing across the 3 bureaus and the generated scores.

To avoid the AZ penalty, if you're someone who likes to pay in full quickly. You could time the statement with a small balance on a card.

Or if you have a Chase or Discover card you could charge them at any time, wait for the charge to post, and call for a mid-cycle update.

With Chase, I've seen it update by the next day, at least on EX

Slabenstein · ‎10-10-2020

If I follow your correctly, I think this is the answer to your main question: credit scores and credit reports do not have start dates and end dates. They are a snapshot of your profile at the time they were pulled. The services through which you are getting your reports & scores may only update once a week or once a month, or may be delayed in updating, but your actual report and scores reflect any changes as soon as they are reported by your lenders. With revolving balances, the dates you need to keep track of are the balance reporting dates (often but not always the statement close date, depending on the issuer), and it looks like you are. If BBVA has reported a balance since your $0 Amex balance posted, then you have already recovered from the AZ penalty, even if it isn't yet visible to you.

SirMilo · ‎10-10-2020

Thanks for the response @Anonymous .

I've always paid multiple times a month and I am trying to break myself of that since I now understand that I might actually be creating more damage to my score by doing so, as seen in the OP.

So in your opinion, I should expect to see this ugliness on the 2 remaining accounts in the near future?

Do I have the whole start/end date thing wrong?

SirMilo · ‎10-10-2020

@Slabenstein wrote:
With revolving balances, the dates you need to keep track of are the balance reporting dates (often but not always the statement close date, depending on the issuer), and it looks like you are. If BBVA has reported a balance since your $0 Amex balance posted, then you have already recovered from the AZ penalty, even if it isn't yet visible to you.

Yes, I have been trying to keep track of my statement dates as well as getting PIF around a week before the payment due date.

I already feel better @Slabenstein . Thank you.

I still have a lot to learn about this stuff. I'm almost sad that I waited 50+ years to get better aquainted with it.

SirMilo · ‎10-10-2020

@Anonymous ,

It looks like @Slabenstein has enlightened me on how all of this works. Thanks again.

Slabenstein · ‎10-10-2020

Btb, if your usual strategy is to pay the balance on a card a week before the statement so it posts zero, all you need to do to avoid the AZ penalty is pick one bank card that you use every month (and that isn't from Chase) to be an exception and pay that one after the statement instead.

SirMilo · ‎10-10-2020

@Slabenstein wrote:
Btb, if your usual strategy is to pay the balance on a card a week before the statement so it posts zero, all you need to do to avoid the AZ penalty is pick one bank card that you use every month (and that isn't from Chase) to be an exception and pay that one after the statement instead.

Thank you for explaining it as you would to a child, sincerely. I really am a 55 year old infant with this stuff.

A simple explanation that leaves little room for overthinking the situation is just what I needed.

My wife has the creative mind and I have the analytical mind. Sometimes i'm my own worst enemy when I start overanalyzing everything. With the pandemic and all, i've had plenty of time to overthink things on a grand scale.

Anonymous · ‎10-10-2020

@Slabenstein wrote:
If I follow your correctly, I think this is the answer to your main question: credit scores and credit reports do not have start dates and end dates. They are a snapshot of your profile at the time they were pulled. The services through which you are getting your reports & scores may only update once a week or once a month, or may be delayed in updating, but your actual report and scores reflect any changes as soon as they are reported by your lenders. With revolving balances, the dates you need to keep track of are the balance reporting dates (often but not always the statement close date, depending on the issuer), and it looks like you are. If BBVA has reported a balance since your $0 Amex balance posted, then you have already recovered from the AZ penalty, even if it isn't yet visible to you.

@Slabenstein this is almost correct.

there is an interstitial time between when the lender reports to the bureau and when the bureau actually inserts the data into their live data set. In my experience, EX is the fastest, but every now and then, they fall behind.

for instance, if you go to CK you can see the date each of your accounts report. all three bureaus get it that date. you can do a fresh pull that day or next and the info may not be there for another day or two.

Then once it is put in the live dataset, then the alerts, or delayed alerts lol, get sent out. So, we have a couple of delays to deal with.

that's why when you're testing, you verify the dataset has been updated before you waste your money pulling a new 3B. You check it via Wallethub for TransUnion or EX for EX or CK, ect.. for EQ.

Anonymous · ‎10-11-2020

@Anonymous wrote:
that's why when you're testing, you verify the dataset has been updated before you waste your money pulling a new 3B. You check it via Wallethub for TransUnion or EX for EX or CK, ect.. for EQ.

myFICO subscription alerts can help verify that things have been updated, but only if there is a balance change.

For example, my Discover card is reporting $0 this month, same as last month, and I won't get an alert that any CRA updated with the new statement report date.

My monthly 3B report was ready to pull yesterday (10th), but AMEX (closed on 8th) hasn't reported to any bureau yet (11th). September balance was $302, and October will be $0. So I need to wait for all 3 bureau myFICO alerts to balance changes before using the 3B.