Credit Scores with Bureaus are going the opposing directions

[Anonymous]

I was wondering if this could be explained by anyone with knowledge of how credit works. I was in the 724 Exp, 732 EQ and 743 TU back in Sep. Then I relocated and was approved for a Sapphire and Platnum Amex and leased a new vehicle. All the hard pulls in the short period dropped my fico to 642 EXP, 683 EQ, and 679 for TU. In Dec they all went upby roughly 23 pts then in early Jan I was getting close to normal, 679 EXP, 712 EQ, 719 TU. Last week my sapphire card increase my CL by another $5k and my TU went up to 764 and EQ is 743. EXP however dropped 23 points to 656. My experian report doesn't give the details but gave me an alert that I dropped 23 pts and went from good to fair. My other reports went up and I haven't applied to any cards or anything with my credit. Thank you for any insight anyone can lend me

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I was wondering if this could be explained by anyone with knowledge of how credit works. I was in the 724 Exp, 732 EQ and 743 TU back in Sep. Then I relocated and was approved for a Sapphire and Platnum Amex and leased a new vehicle. All the hard pulls in the short period dropped my fico to 642 EXP, 683 EQ, and 679 for TU. In Dec they all went upby roughly 23 pts then in early Jan I was getting close to normal, 679 EXP, 712 EQ, 719 TU. Last week my sapphire card increase my CL by another $5k and my TU went up to 764 and EQ is 743. EXP however dropped 23 points to 656. My experian report doesn't give the details but gave me an alert that I dropped 23 pts and went from good to fair. My other reports went up and I haven't applied to any cards or anything with my credit. Thank you for any insight anyone can lend me

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Your Experian report should give you the details -- if it is indeed a credit report.  That's what a credit report is.  A detailed listing of every account present in the bureau's database that belongs to you.

Also your reports don't go up or down -- scores can do that, but reports can't.   They are just a detailed list of accounts, along with events like lates and inquiries and so on.

People here can help you best if you tell them what tools you are using to pull your reports and your scores.  

[Anonymous]

I currently use Experian.com and my last 3 credit bureau was on 1/7/19. I have sat idle with no movement on my credit. No apps, zero lates, no new inquiries, zero new accounts. The only change in the last 3 months was a credit limit increase from chase bank from $5k to $10k. Then 2 days later Experian drops my credit score by 23 points. TU and EQ all went up by larger margins. My credit balances are next to zero and way less than 1% utilization.
I’m really confused and hope this is a temporary drop due to credit limit increase. Is that possible?

[Anonymous]

Since you have Experian CreditWorks Premium, your Experian report is updated daily. Look for changes on it. If there aren’t any, then you may have triggered a difference in the way Experian chooses to score things and that’s all that can be said about it unfortunately. You’ll be able to sort it out when your next 3B update is available. 

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:
I’m really confused and hope this is a temporary drop due to credit limit increase. Is that possible?

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It seems unlikely. They didn't pull your credit from Experian for the increase, did they?

Any explanation we come up with is going to be a wild guess (because there's really just not enough information available). But here's my wild guess: The "way less than 1% utilization" was rounded up by Equifax and TransUnion but rounded down by Experian. So you got dinged by Experian for having zero balance report on your revolving credit. If that's it, you have nothing to worry about. You'll get the points back when you let a slightly higher balance report.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:
The only change in the last 3 months was a credit limit increase from chase bank from $5k to $10k. Then 2 days later Experian drops my credit score by 23 points. TU and EQ all went up by larger margins. My credit balances are next to zero and way less than 1% utilization.
I’m really confused and hope this is a temporary drop due to credit limit increase. Is that possible?

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No, a CLI unless it was a self-initiated HP CLI cannot cause a FICO score to drop.  It's also work noting that "Experian" isn't dropping your score.  A credit scoring model uses Experian data to generate a score.  There is no gripe with Experian itself here.  Clearly the information on your Experian credit report changed between your before/after scores.  I can assure you that it was something other than the Chase CLI.

[Anonymous]

No I didn’t see an inquiry. I didn’t request a CLI. It just came out of nowhere but if it is tracked daily it should probably go back up.
Why would carrying a zero balance hurt your score?

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:
Why would carrying a zero balance hurt your score?

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All zero reported balances on all revolvers in the eyes of the FICO algorithm means you aren't using your revolving credit and a penalty is taken for "no recent revolving credit use."  Utilization is just a single point in time snapshot.  Someone can be using their card a hundred times for thousands of dollars throughout a cycle, but if it reports $0 the algorithm sees it as not being utilized.  If one has many cards, all it takes is one of them to report a small (non-zero) balance to avoid this penalty.  If one has just a single revolver, that one revolver should report a small balance to avoid the penalty.

[Anonymous]

After reviewing the report, my balance on the credit card with the recent CLI increase displays 0. I mean, if I make a purchase on my credit card I wanted to pay it off every month to not incur any interest. I guess the timing of zero balance is the only thing other than the CLI that has changed.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I mean, if I make a purchase on my credit card I wanted to pay it off every month to not incur any interest.

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It's great that you desire to pay no interest at all.  Bravo on that. 

The good news here is that you don't ever need to pay a penny of interest in order to allow your card to report a small balance.  All that is required is that your statement balance be something other than $0.  So long as you're paying off your previous statement balance every month, that's considered "paying in full" and you'll never incur interest. 

For example, your statement balance is $300.  Your bill will say statement balance $300, minimum payment due $25 or whatever.  By the time your payment due date comes (say) 3 weeks later, perhaps you've run that card up to a $1000 balance.  What you're likely doing currently is paying that $1000 current balance before your due date, thus resulting in a $0 statement balance to report to the bureaus.  All you need to pay however is $300 to avoid interest and can let as much as that $700 remaining report as it will become your new statement balance.  The following month, you'd have to pay off that $700 in order to avoid interest. 

Using the numbers above, if your current balance is $1000 (with a $300 statement balance) just before your due date, I'd suggest making a payment of $975-$995, thus allowing a $5-$25 balance to remain and become your new statement balance that reports.  The following month and every month going forward, continue to pay off all except a small portion of your current balance.  In doing this, you'll be maximizing your FICO scores.

So long as you're using your card every month, you can follow this guideline above to never pay any interest and always report a non-zero balance to the bureaus.  The only time this won't work is if you go a cycle without making any purchases.  Say you have a $20 statement balance due on an upcoming date, but you haven't made any purchases since.  Your $20 statement balance will then be equal to your $20 current balance, meaning you'd have to pay off the $20 to avoid any interest.  As long as at least a $5 or so purchase is made every cycle, you'd never have to worry about that though.