Can someone help me understand this drop??

[minimist]

Hi all,

I check my reports every single day as I'm still trying to rebuild and experian lets me pull all three every day so why not. All of my reports have been stagnant since around Nov with EX being 632, EQ being 640 and TU going from 670 - 673. All that time I had been at or under 33% UTIL, baddies still the same nothing new added or removed. Then when I pulled my reports on Jan 11th I saw EX and EQ had both jumped a little, which is a boost I was expecting since I bought my car last January and now is around the time those inqs should stop factoring in my scoring. THEN yesterday I pulled my reports and my EX dropped to 627! I haven't seen a drop like that in a quite a while and was really confused. I then pulled my reports again today and EQ also dropped this time to 626. So in two days I've lost 11 points on EX and 22 on Eq. Looking at my reports the only thing that has changed is a higher util which is from holiday shopping, but it only went up to 36%! I've had wayyyy higher util in the past, I was at 72% for a long time and had higher scores than this. My TU util has also gone up to 34% but that score has not changed, and literally nothing else on my reports have changed (outside of AAOA going up and time since negative going up, which I thought were good things). So I guess my question is why has a 3% increase in UTIL caused my scores to go down in the 620's when I've had far higher util before and my scores were higher. I haven't had a negative change in my reports like this for a very long time. I have a pretty thick file too, lots of accounts and such, my AAOA is only 3.4 - 3.8 years depending on the bureau but why do I seem to be so util sensitive all of a sudden?

[Revelate]

Can't really compare large time windows FICO wise, too many things change and bucketing isn't well understood at all in terms of what seperates people into different buckets (scorecards) explicitly, especially on dirty files.

People have talked about 30 / 33% being a line for aggregate, maybe you tripped over that, or maybe something else changed, hard to say but if you pay it back down and you gain them back that'd be pretty conclusive.  I know I saw no difference in FICO 5 between 13% and 27% aggregate, and presumably there are higher breakpoints on the way to 100%.

Out of curiosity how much are you paying for the Experian daily pulling of all 3?  I have only being using the Experian freebie trial for 1 per month and occasionally will buy additional scores if I need them for some reason.

[Anonymous]

It could have been caused by a number of things.  You mention that your CC utilization has gone up.  If the utilization on one particular card went up (that's called individual utilization) you might have crossed some kind of breakpoint for individual U.  If, on the other hand, some of your credit cards went from $0 to showing a positive balance, that might have also caused the drop.

But the bottom line is that the only way you'd get a reliable answer is for a FICO expert to sit down with all three of your reports and to see fresh snapshots of them on a weekly basis for the last several weeks.  You are not likely to find such a person in your neighborhood and you may not have that kind of detailed report data either.

So I would just not worry about it.  It was caused by something -- what will be an unknown.

But it sounds like you have a desire to see your scores improve.  That's the key takeaway I am getting.  If so, you should consider developing a plan to pay off every penny of your CC debt (all cards to zero) and then continue to use exactly one credit card for a few months, keeping that card reporting around $10-20.  That should give you a significant boost to your scores.

[minimist]

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@Revelate wrote:

Can't really compare large time windows FICO wise, too many things change and bucketing isn't well understood at all in terms of what seperates people into different buckets (scorecards) explicitly, especially on dirty files.

People have talked about 30 / 33% being a line for aggregate, maybe you tripped over that, or maybe something else changed, hard to say but if you pay it back down and you gain them back that'd be pretty conclusive.  I know I saw no difference in FICO 5 between 13% and 27% aggregate, and presumably there are higher breakpoints on the way to 100%.

Out of curiosity how much are you paying for the Experian daily pulling of all 3?  I have only being using the Experian freebie trial for 1 per month and occasionally will buy additional scores if I need them for some reason.

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Thanks for the response, I guess something did trip. I also thought it might be some kind of rebucketing thing but I'm not even going to pretend like I know the nuances of that lol plus I would think that TU would also be affected if that were the case?

As far as the daily pulls its $24.99 a month, it used to be like $22 a month but it changed back in July or August. I'm actually don't think I'm supposed to be able to pull them all every day unless they're just being nice, but my membership says I'm paying for one quarterly pull of all 3 reports with daily monitoring. But I go in and order a new report every day and it doesn't charge me anything extra so I feel the price is very worth it. I think the regular price for a 3 report view is $35 each.

[minimist]

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@Anonymous wrote:

It could have been caused by a number of things.  You mention that your CC utilization has gone up.  If the utilization on one particular card went up (that's called individual utilization) you might have crossed some kind of breakpoint for individual U.  If, on the other hand, some of your credit cards went from $0 to showing a positive balance, that might have also caused the drop.

But the bottom line is that the only way you'd get a reliable answer is for a FICO expert to sit down with all three of your reports and to see fresh snapshots of them on a weekly basis for the last several weeks.  You are not likely to find such a person in your neighborhood and you may not have that kind of detailed report data either.

So I would just not worry about it.  It was caused by something -- what will be an unknown.

But it sounds like you have a desire to see your scores improve.  That's the key takeaway I am getting.  If so, you should consider developing a plan to pay off every penny of your CC debt (all cards to zero) and then continue to use exactly one credit card for a few months, keeping that card reporting around $10-20.  That should give you a significant boost to your scores.

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You know I actually did have a card go from $0 to like $200, I didn't realize an individual util would have such an impact but thats the only thing that would explain it. I actually have snapshots of all my reports going back several months and the util going up has been the only change that I see contributing to this. It at least makes me feel better that theoretically next month I'll get those points back when my balances are paid.

[SouthJamaica]

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@minimist wrote:

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@Revelate wrote:

Can't really compare large time windows FICO wise, too many things change and bucketing isn't well understood at all in terms of what seperates people into different buckets (scorecards) explicitly, especially on dirty files.

People have talked about 30 / 33% being a line for aggregate, maybe you tripped over that, or maybe something else changed, hard to say but if you pay it back down and you gain them back that'd be pretty conclusive.  I know I saw no difference in FICO 5 between 13% and 27% aggregate, and presumably there are higher breakpoints on the way to 100%.

Out of curiosity how much are you paying for the Experian daily pulling of all 3?  I have only being using the Experian freebie trial for 1 per month and occasionally will buy additional scores if I need them for some reason.

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Thanks for the response, I guess something did trip. I also thought it might be some kind of rebucketing thing but I'm not even going to pretend like I know the nuances of that lol plus I would think that TU would also be affected if that were the case?

As far as the daily pulls its $24.99 a month, it used to be like $22 a month but it changed back in July or August. I'm actually don't think I'm supposed to be able to pull them all every day unless they're just being nice, but my membership says I'm paying for one quarterly pull of all 3 reports with daily monitoring. But I go in and order a new report every day and it doesn't charge me anything extra so I feel the price is very worth it. I think the regular price for a 3 report view is $35 each.

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Wow, that's amazing. I thought you can just get it quarterly for that price.

[minimist]

So I'm posting this seeking more guidance because at this point I'm not convinced that this is not all arbitrary BS.

Shortly after I'd made my original post my scores went back up to where they had been, slightly higher with TU being 686 and EQ being 660. My EX has hovered between 640-647 for the past few months. Again, I pull these every day so I am very aware of the trends.

Today after a recent app spree my EQ has dropped 34 points and TU has dropped 46 points to 640, with the conflicting reasons listed. Seriously, I have "You have a long credit history" listed under helping factors and "You have a short credit history" listed under hurting factors.

My only changes have been 2 new inqs on eq and 3 new on TU, but its been a couple of days since those and I didn't have any immediate score changes. New accounts have been added which dropped my AAOA from 4.1 years to 4, but it has also dropped my overall utilization to 29% on all bureaus.

So I'm still not understanding why my scores are fluctuating so much after seemingly small changes? A 1-2 month decrease in AAOA and better util shouldn't swing my reports 30-40 points either way, and definitely not negatively right?

[DollyLama]

No new lates to any of your accounts?

Have any of your collections starting updating monthly on the reports section? The month and year will be in red

The two new accounts that have hit the bureaus, did they hit with a balance?

Can you please expand your reports on your revolving lines and give us each account, their high line, current balance so we can look at indiividual utilization?

What is causing a 60k difference in total debt ie installment that is reporting to to 2 bureaus and not the 3rd? 

[minimist]

No, I don't have any new late payments (Never going down that road again unless I absolutely have to). The ones that I do have on my report are aging and are almost two years old, I plan on goodwilling them once they reach that mark.

I don't have any collection accounts at all or public records.

One new account did hit with a balance but it was the same balance as the old account, it was the Walmart store card to MC conversion, and I got an increase with the conversion as well. The two other new accounts reported with a 0 balance so that was a total of $5k between those two, and the last new account has not reported yet.

I'm on mobile so I didn't get a chance to post screenshots this time but overall util is down from 38% to 29%. At 38%, some  of the new accts reporting and all the new inqs reporting two days again I was at 647, 686, 660. Now with all the accounts reporting and util dropping I'm at the new low scores but my AAOA which they show at the bottom has only decreased by 1 month on EQ and 2 on TU.

And the total debt discrepancy on EQ is from student loans that aren't reporting to it, I'm not sure why they aren't but it has always been like that. I'm not sure that is a factor in his case, but it may.

Thanks for trying to help me figure this out. I'm sure in another month or two my scores will rebound like they did last time but I'd still like to know if possible why they keep dropping so hard all of a sudden. Its really sucky to work on rebuilding your credit and fixing your baddies only to have your scores be low like you barely did anything at all.