Alerts and when credit cards report balances

[Anonymous]

Hello eveyone,

I have been checking the forums to see if I find someone talking about this but no luck. With the hope of finding an answer, I decided to post for the first time, so bare with me. Basically my question is around our My Fico Alerts. Before I start, I have called all my credit cards and asked when exaclty and how often they send balance reports to the credit bureaus. See bellow the answers:

Discover= 25th of each month reported only once (end of statement cycle)

Capital One= 8th of each month reported only once (end of statement cycle)

Nelnet= they report the very last business day of the month

So, to my understanding, My Fico should receive this info from these credit bureaus withing a resonable timeframe from this date. Basically I am expecting that every month I should receive an Alert in MyFico account stating the new balance around 

this date. However, I am receiving various alerts at random dates indicating that my balance has change once and the twice again.

Example below:

-Discover -End of statement 4/25/18: 

On 4/23/18- I paid $500 & left a balance of $20 (which I have set up to pay on my due date May 14th)

I got an alert on the 23rd that balance has increased $60

then got another alert on the 25th that my balance has increased $10

Weird!! Didn't I just paid???

-Nelnet- They report last business day (should be on the 30th of April)

I am on deferment. I got an alert indicating that my student loans have increased on each of these days:

- 4/9/18, , 4/10/18- & 5/8/18

Now, my question is, If credit cards and student loans have specific dates in which they send this info reporting that balance on my last day of my statement, why am I getting constant alerts on random dates of balance increases when in reality what matters is just that one number or balance sent on that last day of your statement which was sent from the credit cards to the credit bureaus? 

Is having all these constant alerts afecting me in anything. It bothers me that I am thinking things work a certain way but I am getting different results with MyFico. I have been paying off 90% of each credit card on the day my statement closes  to keep credit untilization on each card under 5% which is actually happening. However, I am not getting any results at all. No changes in my score and then all I get is alerts indicating my credit balance is going up. If I keep recieving these alerts of balance increases on differenent and random dates, how can I play this game and try to get my scores higher?

[Anonymous]

I can't be sure what is going on with your alerts.  But here are some things you could do to help here:

(1)  Enroll in Credit Karma.  It is free and will allow you to obtain your full TU and EQ reports as often as once a week (fresh data).  The CK reports also contain precise dates (mm/dd/yyyy) for a number of fields, including a field called Date Last Reported.  If you print out your full EQ and TU report once a week for six weeks in a row, you should get a very clear sense of what the reported balance was for each card and the date it reported (compared with the date the report was pulled).

(2)  Pay all cards to zero except one (AZEO) with the remaining card at a small positive balance.  Use only that card for a month so you can be certain that the zero balance cards stay zero.  If you do have to use one of your zero-balance cards make sure that the transaction date is at least 10 days before the expected statement date and be sure to pay the balance to zero immediately.

PS.  Are you getting a lot of value for the money you are spending on the myFICO Ultimate product?  There are lots of ways to get frequent reports and FICO 8 scores at almost no cost.

[Anonymous]

Hi there,

Thank you so much for your advice. I will definitely follow these steps. I check my CK on a weekly basis and I does show me the reporting dates from each credit bureau. However, this info does not match what MYFico is reporting. It's so weird. I will however just start doing the AZEO method. I haven't really done it yet because I have two cards where I am getting good miles. I really do want to see results in my scores so I will just keep it to using one card just to test. As far as your question about myFICO Ultimate product, I am just doing it for two months to see a pattern in my account ant get the hang of it. I really don't think it's worth sticing with it. Apreciate a lot your input!