Balance Increase = Score increase?

[islandchild82]

This is a score watch alert I received the other day:

There are a few changes to your credit report today:

• An account shows a balance increase.

Also, your FICO® score has increased by 6

Any ideas as to why I received a score increase? I'm assuming the balance increase and score increase are related. The increase was on a card that already has a balance.

Just thought I would throw this out there. I'll take a score increase any way I can get one!

[Anonymous]

If you already had a balance, then the two events are probably unrelated. The score increase more likely came from the aging of an account or some other menial factor.

[Anonymous]

Could be inq got older, could be new account got older, could be history got older. I'm taking a guess that this 6 point gain had something to do with age.

[RobertEG]

Yup.  FICO alerts are not necessarily indicative of credit score changes, for they are purely computer generated alerts pegged to individual actions.  An alert pegged to an increase in the balance on one account does not look at what has gone on overall.  You could have paid down another, high balance account, from, for example, from 90% util to 5% util, which would have a tremendous positive impact on score.  And old inq chould have gone over 12 months, thus droppping from your score. Lots of other factors.  But the alerts dont know and dont care about that.  Alerts, other than those pegged directly to credit score,  are for identity protection and account protection to see use that you did not know about, and not very useful in their impact on credit score.

Message Edited by RobertEG on 02-22-2008 04:58 PM

Message Edited by RobertEG on 02-22-2008 05:00 PM