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Change CC due dates for ease of AZEO?

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Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Change CC due dates for ease of AZEO?

AZEO works, at least for me. Interesting that 16pts seems to be the number many notice when non AZEO. I have six cards, one new auto loan.

 

February statements...

BCE is my AZEO card. Usually $60ish balance. QVC issued a credit, making a credit balance of $27.

No AZEO, zero balance on all cards.

16pt drop.

Discover was next statement cut date. Balance of $60ish.

16pt increase.

March 1st oldest card hit 1 yr...

13pt increase.

Not sure if 13pt was all the 1yr mark, but nothing else changed except auto loan was 4mo, slight decrease in total loan.

 

I've done the no AZEO a couple times... seems to always be 16pts on Experian & Equifax. TU also changes, but they are never in real time for me, and usually not 16pts. But, they also have more inquiries thanks to auto dealership shotgunning for best rate... 3 inquiries, total of 5 on TU.

 

 


@Anonymouswrote:

That's really close to what I am looking for.  (Perfect would be 15+ cards, exactly one open loan, a credit history of 3+ years and clean profile.)

 

People have been wondering lately whether AZEO (All Zero Except One) gives any help for FICO 8.  The problem is that often the person who thinks it doesn't has (after you probe a little) many open installment accounts and few cards.  A recent example was a guy with a dirty profile, 11 open loans, and three cards.  He went from AZEO to all cards reporting a balance with no FICO 8 help -- but he was still going from 12 out of 14 accounts showing a balance to 14 out of 14, so his experiment is a bit of a dirty test tube.

 

What I'd like to do is get at least four different people to run the experiment, which is to go from exactly one card showing a balance to all cards -- but for all four people to have many cards and exactly one loan.  E.g. one loan and a dozen cards.  That way we'll have the person going from 2 out of 13 accounts showing a balance to 13 out of 13.  That will be both many accounts (13 considered as a raw integer number) as well as 100% of open accounts (considered as a percentage)

 

Your profile is pretty close to that, though you are still starting with at best three accounts showing a balance, and if the raw integer number is one of the things FICO considers then that's not perfect for the test: two would be better.


 

 

Message 11 of 24
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Change CC due dates for ease of AZEO?

Thanks OldMan.  So to confirm....

 

* You have compared all eight cards showing a balance with exactly one card -- and that has resulted in no FICO 8 change at all?

 

* You have one open mortgage.

 

* Aside from the mortgage and the eight cards, you have no other open accounts (loans, charge cards, LOCs, auto leases, etc.)

 

* Your profile contains no derogs.

 

I find it totally believable that FICO 8 Classic may have completely dropped the factor that tracks how many accounts are showing a balance.  I am mildly surprised that it doesn't care at all, since the older models and FICO 9 do care, if I understand what others have said.  But still it's only a mild surprise. 

 

The cool thing is that this is an easy test to make.  There must be loads of people with clean profiles, many cards, and very few loans.  Should be easy to get this test replicated from multiple people.

 

 

Message 12 of 24
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Change CC due dates for ease of AZEO?

Hi Sjrn.  I am not entirely clear whether you are comparing All Zero with AZEO (i.e. 0 cards showing a balance vs 1 card)... or whether you are comparing AZEO with All Cards (i.e. 1 cards showing a balance vs all 6 cards).

 

It's the latter that I am interested in.  Going from exactly 1 card to all 6 of your cards.  If you have done that test, have you kept your total utilization low both times?  (1-5%)  It's important that your utilization not go up when you have all cards reporting and also important that every card be at < 28% individual utilization as well.

 

I assume your new auto loan appears on all three reports.  Is that right?  You call it a new loan, so if it appeared while the testing was going on it would really screw up your test results.

 

Also can you confirm that the six cards and the auto loan are your only open accounts?  You have exactly 7 open accounts?

Message 13 of 24
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Change CC due dates for ease of AZEO?

7 open accounts

1 auto loan, 11/2017 purchase/loan (yes, on all threesince Dec)

6 cc... always 1 w/1-2% balance, and 5 at zero

 

I have set cc due dates a week apart. That allows me to make sure purchases never post just before cut dates... always zero. The QVC credit screwed up AZEO because it took them over a month to post, they issued credit on cut date, making BCE $0, all cards at zero. Because cards are set a week apart, I made purchase on Discover, let that balance report... 16pts down w/no BCE balance, 16pts up when Discovery balance reported.

 

I have Experian and myFICO accounts to track, also CK, CS, etc. I've only had myFICO 3b since January, and will probably drop it due to cost. Also my scores/reports aren't changing much now. 

 

btw... having cards by issuer (ie 2Amex on same date)  a week apart also lets me track info better.

Message 14 of 24
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Change CC due dates for ease of AZEO?


@Anonymouswrote:

Thanks OldMan.  So to confirm....

 

* You have compared all eight cards showing a balance with exactly one card -- and that has resulted in no FICO 8 change at all?

I believe (if memory serves) I started with 5 accounts reporting and eased into AZEO one account at a time with no changes along the way, I was actually expecting a bump that never came, I was going to post about my results but I wanted to verify first by backing out 1 account at a time (so far at 3 accounts).  I will report a balance on all 8 this month to give you more data point but with 2 inquiries and 2 account reaching 1 year maturity on 28th and 29th of this month, the result will probably be skewed at best.

 

* You have one open mortgage.

Yes

 

* Aside from the mortgage and the eight cards, you have no other open accounts (loans, charge cards, LOCs, auto leases, etc.)

Just 3 closed CC accounts

 

* Your profile contains no derogs.

None

 

I find it totally believable that FICO 8 Classic may have completely dropped the factor that tracks how many accounts are showing a balance.  I am mildly surprised that it doesn't care at all, since the older models and FICO 9 do care, if I understand what others have said.  But still it's only a mild surprise. 

 

The cool thing is that this is an easy test to make.  There must be loads of people with clean profiles, many cards, and very few loans.  Should be easy to get this test replicated from multiple people.

 

 


Message 15 of 24
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Change CC due dates for ease of AZEO?

Hi guys. Really appreciate you chiming in.

 

Looks like Sjrn was not tracking the thing I have been talking about: namely going from exactly 1 card to all cards.  Rather, he was tracking from 1 to zero, which is well known to cause a score drop.

 

Oldman has more helpful data, but the simplest check is to simply go from 1 card to All Cards in one big swoop (assuming of course that you have very few loans and many cards).  This lowers the problems of remembering what happened and confounding factors occuring over time (AAoA changing, inquiries falling off or adding, new accounts coming on or turning one year old, etc.).

 

I hope Jamie can experiment with going from 1 card to 10 cards in one big jump (even better if he can do that with his wife too).  Jamie only has two open loans so it will be going from 3 accounts to 13 -- not quite as revealing as 2 to 12 but still very helpful.

Message 16 of 24
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Change CC due dates for ease of AZEO?

I will jump back and forth from 1-8 several times after all my inquiries and new accounts graduate the 1 year mark by mid July.

 

Here is the thing though, the question about the benefit of AZEO isn't really about going from all accounts reporting to one, it's really about multiple accounts reporting to one, whether the number of multiple accounts is 2 or 8 shouldn't really matter right? The fact based on my data point is that AZEO didn't work in my case.

Message 17 of 24
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Change CC due dates for ease of AZEO?


@Anonymouswrote:

I will jump back and forth from 1-8 several times after all my inquiries and new accounts graduate the 1 year mark by mid July.

 

Here is the thing though, the question about the benefit of AZEO isn't really about going from all accounts reporting to one, it's really about multiple accounts reporting to one, whether the number of multiple accounts is 2 or 8 shouldn't really matter right? The fact based on my data point is that AZEO didn't work in my case.


Thanks so much for being willing to go from 1 to 8 to 1 to 8 later this year.  REALLY appreciate that.  And nice to see that you grasp the importance of having a stable profile without a lot of other confounders.

 

As far as your last question, what we know is that most FICO models consider this question as a scoring factor:  How many accounts have balances?  (Scroll down halfway through this page to see FICO mention it.)

 

What is not known for certain is how each FICO Model (and possibly scorecards within each model) implement that. 

 

     * Is it revolving accounts only that are considered?  Possibly, but that's not the language of the negative reason statements people get, which simply says "accounts." 

 

     * Does FICO consider the raw number of accounts only?  (1-2 is better than 4, which is better than 7... etc.) 

 

     * Or does FICO consider the proportion of your accounts that are showing a balance?  (Less than a third of your accounts is better than half which is better than most which is better than all)

 

     * Or does FICO consider both the raw number and the proportion?

 

At any rate, the simplest step is to first show conclusively that FICO 8 does include this scoring factor in some way or another.  The simplest way to do that is to have somebody with a ton of cards and very few loans (ideally only 1) go from exactly 1 card to all cards.  You have eight cards and that's fairly close to a ton.  By having all 8 cards report a balance, you'd be going from exactly 2 accounts (out of 9) reporting a balance to 9 out of 9.  If FICO 8 includes this factor (How many accounts have balances?) then you will certainly be triggering a score drop, whether it is by raw number or proportion or both.

 

Until recently I had assumed everyone agreed that FICO 8 gave some penalty for this factor, but a number of people have expressed some doubt, so this is the right place to start.  It will show (a) that FICO 8 cares and (b) the maximum amount of score drop it can cause.  Or it will show conclusively that FICO 8 Classic does not care at all.  Either way it would be good to know.

Message 18 of 24
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Change CC due dates for ease of AZEO?

I'll put in the time after my scores stabilize after July, I'll go from 8-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8 which will provide a good set of data point for the questions you raised. I guess we'll meeting again in about a year lol.
Message 19 of 24
Glen_M
Frequent Contributor

Re: Change CC due dates for ease of AZEO?

I do something like this.  I opened all my accounts on the same day of the month and thats when most of them have a statement cycle and do their reporting (just in case I ran into a company that wouldn't let me change it later), but some of the companies like to report at the end/begining of the month so a few show up there.  

 

I don't have a huge list to keep track of, so as long as I remember the few that like to do it their own way they can be dealth with accordingly, and the rest are taken care of shortly before their shared statement day.



Message 20 of 24
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