AndySoCal wrote:
The reason code you cite in your response And no, it's not "too many accounts with balances", it's "too many accounts paid as agreed." Did not make any sense so I did a little investigating. Does this happen to bee reason code 19 from Trans Union or 27 from Equifax? If so there is a type somewhere the reason should say "Too few accounts currently paid as agreed". The reason does not mean what you might think it does. So the link below is to article that helps explain it better than I can.
http://www.experian.com/ask_max/max041807d.html
I hope this helps
OK, I pulled my fico.com/12 TU score, and here are my negatives:
1. There are no recent balances on your revolving credit accounts.
Your credit report shows no recent balances on your revolving accounts [?]. Your FICO score was hurt because you are not currently demonstrating active revolving credit management.
What to do about this: You might consider moderate and responsible use of your credit cards (such as charging low balances and repaying them on time).
2. You have too many credit accounts.
Your FICO score takes into account the number of accounts (such as credit cards or installment loans) on your credit report. You have a large number of accounts. In general, people who have a large number of accounts pose more of a risk to lenders than people with a moderate number of accounts.
What to do about this: Avoid opening more credit accounts at this time and as a general rule, if you don't need or plan to use credit, don't apply for it.
FICO High Achievers [?] have an average of 6 accounts currently paid as agreed.
3. You have a short credit history.
Your FICO score measures the age of your oldest account and the average age of your accounts. In your case, either your oldest account was opened recently or the average age of your accounts is relatively low. People that do not frequently open new accounts and have longer credit histories generally pose less risk to lenders. Therefore, as your credit history lengthens and you pay your bills on time, this factor should have less of a negative impact on your score. FICO High Achievers [?] opened their oldest account 19 years ago, on average.Most FICO High Achievers have an average age of accounts between 6 and 12 years.
4. You have a consumer finance account on your credit report.
Consumer finance companies typically grant loans to people with poor credit histories. Their customers often cannot get loans from traditional lending companies such as banks or credit unions. These are often high-interest loans because the consumer finance company is assuming more risk by lending to people with less than perfect credit.
The fact that you have a consumer finance company loan on your credit report means that you represent a higher risk to lenders than someone with no consumer finance loans. Even if this consumer finance account is closed, it will still lower your FICO score. However, its impact on your score will lessen as time passes.
What to do about this: You should try to stay current with all of your payments and avoid opening any new credit accounts that you don't need.
Only 12% of FICO High Achievers [?] have a consumer finance account.
So there you go. Interesting that the first reason here is non-usage of cards, or rather, balances not being reported. (The cards are being used, believe me.) Before I got score increases on TU only for 0 accounts with balances. Maybe now that TU thinks I'm in the clean history bucket, this goes back to being a negative? Very strange. Even stranger, it's not the first (only) reason on the regular myFICO score report, even though the accounts are identical (age, balances, etc.)
The "too many credit accounts" is an odd ding. If they said "too many OPEN credit accounts," I could see that, as open accounts do represent risk. But as it doesn't say "open", I take that to mean total displaying.
Oh, and for those who pull the /12 report, accidentally or otherwise, I can certainly see why your heart briefly stopped!
Here's what displays:What’s helping your FICO® score
Since your FICO® score is not good, there are no positive factors that we can list which are helping your score.
1. There are no positive reasons to show.
eta: the regular report lists that I have 24 accounts paid as agreed, so they are counting both open and closed.
Screen two on the regular report has:
765
Hurting your score
* 1. Too many accounts
Helping your score
* 1. No missed payments
* 2. Low credit usage
* 3. Long account history <-- This is longest history. The "short history" in the /12 report is scolding my AAoA, which is low
* 4. Long revolving history <-- Same account as the longest history account.
@haulingthescoreup wrote:
It's now listing "too many accounts paid as agreed" (24 total of all types, of which 15 are open.) I've never had that ding before.
I love the rewording on these things - makes you feel like you're jumping through invisible hoops. Aaaaargh!
Hauling, Is your score code on this listed as #28?
If so, that's "Number of established accounts" and they're only counting open accounts.
So, we now have a "marker" - Hauling's report tells us that TU 15 open accounts is enough to pop the code.
Some experts recommend no more than 10 open accounts if you're seeking to hit that elusive 800.
Knowing FICO gods care about how many accounts are open, is a good thing. A great motivator for credit gardening 
.
beamMEup wrote:
@haulingthescoreup wrote:
It's now listing "too many accounts paid as agreed" (24 total of all types, of which 15 are open.) I've never had that ding before.I love the rewording on these things - makes you feel like you're jumping through invisible hoops. Aaaaargh!
Hauling, Is your score code on this listed as #28?
If so, that's "Number of established accounts" and they're only counting open accounts.
So, we now have a "marker" - Hauling's report tells us that TU thinks 15 open accounts is enough to pop the code.
Some experts recommend no more than 10 open accounts if you're seeking to hit that elusive 800.
Knowing FICO gods care about how many accounts are open, is a good thing. A great motivator for credit gardening
OK, this is bizarre. There were NO reason code numbers this morning when I pulled the report. I'm sure of this, as I copy/ pasted the whole block onto an earlier post, and they don't show up there, either. But I just checked again, and now they're there.
In fact, this morning the /12 reported in the format of the regular FICO codes, and now it's just text. Stranger and stranger!!
Anyway, here are the code numbers:
1. There are no recent balances on your revolving credit accounts.
Reason Code: 24
2. You have too many credit accounts.
Reason Code: 28
3. You have a short credit history.
Reason Code: 14
4. You have a consumer finance account on your credit report.
Reason Code: 6
beamMEup, where did you find the description that reason 28 only deals with open accounts? I'm not doubting you --I haven't done a mortgage app in 12 years, so I've never seen the report versions that describe the code meanings.
And again, it might well be that 15 is too many for the clean/ long history bucket or something.
I can see that logic, and I agree with it, in fact. I think it's the open accounts that pose risk. But if they don't write "open", I'm not sure that they mean open.
The score factors are just traits that have been identified by statistical analysis of consumer histories. So it's not like someone says, I'll bet there's a correlation between number of open or total accounts and credit risk --let's dig through all these reports and see if it's true. It's just something that appeared after crunching the numbers. Someone looking at them said, huh, having even one consumer finance account puts you in a slightly riskier group, so we'll make a reason code for that. And it looks like the same thing happened with number of accounts.
Every now and then someone posts in a doo-dah because they got the too many accounts flag, and they want to start trying to remove closed accounts. The ones I've seen all have 28 or more total accounts, complete with the little red flag on the Credit-at-a-Glance screen (which I don't yet have.) Once someone protested that yes, she had 30 total accounts, but she only had 7 or 8 open accounts. I think that's why I've always figured that it meant total.
But since we need Carnac the Magnificent (one of Johnny Carson's* old characters for you young-un's) to interpret this stuff, your guess is as good as mine.
*Johnny Carson being the predecessor to Jay Leno for you really young-un's.
The score factors are just traits that have been identified by statistical analysis of consumer histories. So it's not like someone says, I'll bet there's a correlation between number of open or total accounts and credit risk --let's dig through all these reports and see if it's true. It's just something that appeared after crunching the numbers. Someone looking at them said, huh, having even one consumer finance account puts you in a slightly riskier group, so we'll make a reason code for that. And it looks like the same thing happened with number of accounts.
Every now and then someone posts in a doo-dah because they got the too many accounts flag, and they want to start trying to remove closed accounts. The ones I've seen all have 28 or more total accounts, complete with the little red flag on the Credit-at-a-Glance screen (which I don't yet have.) Once someone protested that yes, she had 30 total accounts, but she only had 7 or 8 open accounts. I think that's why I've always figured that it meant total.
But since we need Carnac the Magnificent (one of Johnny Carson's* old characters for you young-un's) to interpret this stuff, your guess is as good as mine.
*Johnny Carson being the predecessor to Jay Leno for you really young-un's.
haulingthescoreup wrote:
Once someone protested that yes, she had 30 total accounts, but she only had 7 or 8 open accounts. I think that's why I've always figured that it meant total.
But since we need Carnac the Magnificent (one of Johnny Carson's* old characters for you young-un's) to interpret this stuff, your guess is as good as mine.
*Johnny Carson being the predecessor to Jay Leno for you really young-un's.
I remember Carnac. I was really really really little. Wasn't Carson genius?
It makes it harder when sites rephrase the text for the code. I'm betting that if someone who had 7 or 8 open accounts got dinged, it was probably for Code #4 - Too many bank or national revolving accounts. That code also counts open accounts only, and it includes credit cards, helocs and personal lines of credit. Someone recently posted here that they received this with 6 accounts (and a slap on the wrist by - was it Citi? hmmm, not sure now - who actually closed their account due to this factor). The good news is that by closing accounts you can get out of a code #4 or a code #28.