Don't Understand Experian and Utility

[Anonymous]

So, I've been reducing my overal debt by paying down cards and also BT balances from two cards that have 0% rates about to expire to one card.

Overal util has gone from about 13% to 11% but now the one card where I moved the BTs is at 86%. I'm planning to dump some money in it soon to get it below 80% which seemed to be the point where I'm getting alerts about balance changes.

The thing I don't understand is that during this time, July through August, EQ has been steady at 787. TU has gone from 763 to 767 a 4 point increase. However, EX has gone from 747 to 709, a 38 point drop. This doesn't make much sense to me. All of the relevant accounts are being reported to all three agencies.

Is this typical with Experian?

[Anonymous]

I don't know if it's typical, but I'm going through something similar. I did a balance transfer that put me over 60% util. on one card and I lost 15 points on Experian. And even though I have paid it way down to 30+%, my EX score has not increased (not even 1 point). But to be fair, my EQ score is doing the same thing, it was only my TU that came back up a little bit. I would think that once you get your util. down under 30% that it should start to go back up.

[Anonymous]

Now Transunion dropped over 30 points!

It's listing the balance on all bank cards as double what it actually is. I'm guessing that they're seeing the balance before and after I transferred it to the other card so maybe it will take a month or so for the two accounts I zeroed out to report $0 to the agencies?

Does that make sense?

Now all 3 have dropped over 30 point each. They all say this Chase card has increased x amount. Yeah, but two other acounts went DOWN that amount and I've gotten no notification about those.

[OmarGB9]

Yea sometimes the balance transfer takes a couple of months to update so it shows the balance on both the old card and the new card. As for the point drop, I can attest to it that it does hurt you for a while but your score recovers. I did a BT in June onto my Barclays card and util on that one cars shot up to 83%. EX score took a 38 point dive. However, it's come back up about 14 points as my accounts age and my debt goes down.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Now Transunion dropped over 30 points!

It's listing the balance on all bank cards as double what it actually is. I'm guessing that they're seeing the balance before and after I transferred it to the other card so maybe it will take a month or so for the two accounts I zeroed out to report $0 to the agencies?

Does that make sense?

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Yes it makes sense because when you do a balance transfer it can take another month before the accounts report the new balances. However, don't get your hopes up for a huge score increase once the other accounts report $0 balance, because the damage to your score is being caused by the 80% util. on that one card. You probably won't see much of an improvement in your scores until you get that balance below 30%.

[Anonymous]

experian is my most finicky score and will not budge.... i have added cards, lowered utilization, tried several things, no luck.

[Revelate]

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@Anonymous wrote:

experian is my most finicky score and will not budge.... i have added cards, lowered utilization, tried several things, no luck.

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Experian resolution isn't that fantastic with MF's service; unless I have a non-trivial balance or an inquiry or an address change I don't get an update.

New tradelines should, but unless I cross an AAOA boundary I've never found a drop in score.

[Anonymous]

EX has been the most responsive for me. It updates things the fastest. All three vary in their sensitivity to utilization %. You knew this going in that doing a balance transfer would be a delayed rebalancing of accounts. So you should have expected a score drop. That's the price you pay for 0% BT. but once you pay the balances down to a certain threshold, your points will come bouncing back. 

You have to pay some price for 0% whether it be for 12 months or 21 months. That only seems fair doesn't it? Get those balances down.  

[Anonymous]

I guess I didn't consider this happening. So what seems likely now is that becuase of this dumb situation they think I've doubled my debt so my score tumbles and in a month or so when they get the accurate picture my score will probably only tick up slightly each month unitl it's back to where it was.

This still seems strange to me. I have less than 15k outstanding with 135k total revolving. 87% of my tradelines have $0 balance or less than 1% utilization and my overall utilization is around 11% and ONE card over 80% utilization destroys my numbers. If I ran up all my TL to 50% I'd have 5 times the debt but that wouldn't affect my score like this thing has? That just seems backassward.

[Anonymous]

Well, since these drops Exp & Eq have both rebounded 40 & 42 points respectively and I expect Tu to do the same shortly. This is all a relief.