I'm switching up having my Savor One report a balance to my Discover Chrome so here comes the all zero penalty! Here's to losing ~20pts for about 10 days 
They're only ten days apart on closing date with the S1 closing today so it won't be for long but will be interesting to see. While the card has gotten some usage every month (probably would get more if they would allow PCs to the cash back rotating categories card), I haven't let it report a balance in a year. I think I'm going to rotate which card gets a balance reported more often for the medium term. Also, when I am back at AZEO later this month, I'll be lower on aggregate but not in a manner that will matter scoring wise. The inidivual utilization will be down a few points and should put me below the 28.9% threshold so I'm wondering how many points I'll gain back from my previous small loss prior to this all zero penalty. I only lost 4, 0, 5 going from 2% individual on FICO 8 to 31.5% on the same card so I'm expecting to only gain a point or two at most on EQ and EX. Time to wait and see what happens.
I'm busy to the point of not having the time or energy (or even inclination) to practice, so I simply PIF my cards a few days before the due date and move on. Most months I end up AZEO or AZE2 as a few latent charges trickle in between my payment and the statement; this month I'm going to get hit with the All-Zero penalty for the fourth time in the last two years. No worries though, my scores will most likely bounce back next month. 
@FireMedic1 wrote:What goes down. Must come up. Its only for 30 days.
Won't even be 30 days unless there's some bad delays in reporting! I'll be back to AZEO before my monthly 3B pull, so I won't get to see how it affects anything but FICO 8 classic.
Got my updated FICO 8 scores with the all zero penalty now that SavorOne is at 0, and results were EQ -14, TU -12, EX -18. I'm not updating the scores in my siggy yet since I should have Discover reporting a balance before my monthly 3B pull, but will update here again with any rebound.
Discover reported a $500 balance to all 3 so now I'm back to AZEO from all zero. So going from prior to balance experiementation to now on 4 cards, no installment, BK7 still reporting
AZEO 1.8% indiv. <1% aggregate: EQ8 683 TU8 676 EX8 677
AZEO 31.5% indiv, 7.1%aggregate: EQ8 679, TU8 676 , EX8 672
All zero: EQ 6658, TU8 672, EX8 665
AZEO: 27.7% indiv, 3.6% aggretate: EQ8 683, TU8 684, EX8 677
Somewhere in between the 31.5% reporting and the all zero I must have hit some aging point(no clue what the metric would have been) on TU8 since it temporarily increased in between the higher balance reporting and the change to all zero when i decided to change which card reported. Nonetheless I find it most interesting that EQ8 and EX8 are treating 1.8% and 27.7% individual utilization the same for scoring. Since all of this went on mid cycle relative to my 3B reports I have no idea how FICO 9 or 10 models reacted other than i'm pretty sure from past data that FICO9 will gain a few points for being ultra low on one card if you're AZEO .
@Thomas_Thumb wrote:Nice datapoints.
In general most profiles won't experience a penalty for individual card utilization below 29% threshold. However, the penalty threshold for aggregate utilization is much lower, typically 9% but some report a penalty going above 5% aggregate. I don't see one until 9%.
You may want to test 2 cards reporting "small" balances vs 1. Point drop at 2 reporting should be minimal, 5 points at most. It is better to have AZE2 report during a transition than AZ.
And some report no aggregate utilization "threshold" at all. My experience has been that the higher it is, the worse it is, and the lower it is, the better. In my case every full integer difference normally results in some small gain or loss, and no particular number operates as a "threshold" to cause a substantial gain or loss. I.e. the difference between 8% and 9%, would be the same difference as what is experienced between 9% and 10%, or between 7% and 8%.
