Credit Bureau Customer Service

[Anonymous]

My credit score dropped 20 points overnight. Not knowing the ways of the world, I called Experian to ask why. Waited in the phone queue 25 minutes listening to wretched instrumental muzak interspersed every few minutes by the same annoying pitch for a credit monitoring add-on service... When I informed the rep about the increase and asked if he could tell me the cause this is the only answer he would give: 'We don't give credit advice.' I should have just bailed out right then, but I made several additional requests for an explanation... Every response the same: 'We don't give credit advice.' That's all the guy would say. With a steadily increasing level of snottiness... So I printed out my last report before the drop and the first report after the drop and found one difference: I paid down my two credit card balances to $0...

[Anonymous]

Experian doesn't calculate the score.  They submit your credit profile to FICO who calculates the score.  Experian has no idea.

Paying all your credit cards to $0 is a known issue and can cause you to lose 20 points.  That's why we have the AZEO Method -- see my signature link if you're not familiar with it.

Don't blame Experian, they are just one messenger of FICO, but they don't make the scores or calculate them.

[HeavenOhio]

A roadblock to getting satisfaction from a CRA is that we're not the customers. Rather, we're the product. The customers are the entities who contribute information on us and pull reports.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:
My credit score dropped 20 points overnight....I paid down my two credit card balances to $0...

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This is why your score dropped.  Once both of your credit cards reported $0 you were hit with a penalty.  Allow just one of them to report a small balance again ($5 is fine) and your 20 points will come back as fast as they were lost.