So this is strange; I know @SouthJamaica reported something similar on EX FICO 2 and now I'm beginning to wonder if something is wrong.
This explicitly is a reason code for me on EX FICO 2: Not Using Revolving Credit
This is a well characterized reason code, namely all revolvers at $0 (HELOC's not included on some models) and you take a ding. Easy peasey fix, no big deal. That said, I'm a little confused now on their monitoring solution, and a little skeptical.
At first I thought my CSR at a 43500 limit was simply being excluded (35k being a well pontificated line) and so the $875 balance on it was ignored: no problem, just let something else report.
And the other day DCU reported $28/500, this is a secured credit card that I've had for years and never found any weirdness with it on prior utilization testing done a few years back, but I still have that reason code. Shows up under EX FICO 2 Bankcard as well.
Will have my CFU which the original payoff of which I thought was what triggered this reason code report in another week, so we'll see if it recovers but now I'm wondering if there's just something wrong. Thoughts?
Modified title
@Revelate wrote:So this is strange; I know @SouthJamaica reported something similar on EX FICO 2 and now I'm beginning to wonder if something is wrong.
This explicitly is a reason code for me on EX FICO 2: Not Using Revolving Credit
This is a well characterized reason code, namely all revolvers at $0 (HELOC's not included on some models) and you take a ding. Easy peasey fix, no big deal. That said, I'm a little confused now on their monitoring solution, and a little skeptical.
At first I thought my CSR at a 43500 limit was simply being excluded (35k being a well pontificated line) and so the $875 balance on it was ignored: no problem, just let something else report.
And the other day DCU reported $28/500, this is a secured credit card that I've had for years and never found any weirdness with it on prior utilization testing done a few years back, but I still have that reason code. Shows up under EX FICO 2 Bankcard as well.
Will have my CFU which the original payoff of which I thought was what triggered this reason code report in another week, so we'll see if it recovers but now I'm wondering if there's just something wrong. Thoughts?
Perhaps you're thinking of my post "Fun with negative reason codes" where I observed that dropping a couple of accounts to zero and reducing my utilization a couple of percentage points caused me to go from "high credit usage" to "not using revolving credit" in FICO 2.
Yeah specifically where you had Not Using Revolving Credit (Experian reason code from their interface) with a bunch of accounts reporting.
I have a further datapoint on this as my score recovered, now I'm wondering if there's more going on rather than being a CMS issue... and the resultant score shift sure looks like an all zeros magnitude change at least.
3/10: EX FICO 2 - 765
- CSR: 875/43500
- DCU: 28/500
- Amex Zync $10
- Short Account History (AAOA)
- Accounts with Balances
- Not Using Revolving Credit
- Seeking Credit (inquiries)
3/11: EX FICO 2 - 776 +11 points
- CSR: 875/43500
- DCU: 28/500
- Amex Zync $10
- CFU: 1685/25000
- Short Account History (AAOA)
- Accounts with Balances
- Seeking Credit (inquiries)
- Many New Accounts (AOYA of some flavor)
It appears as though either there's something weird with my file and at least what I read of yours too SJ, where some accounts may not be counted for revolving utilization that we would normally expect to be counted under EX FICO 2... and since this is a mortgage score, it matters. Also I know my HELOC doesn't appear to count too, this looks potentially narrow.
None of these (other than the Amex and the HELOC) are an issue on FICO 8, it's stayed at 827 this entire time.
I don't want to do much with testing this now because I'm less than 2 months out from ticking over 5 years AAOA so need to stabilize balances but I'd be interested to see your listing of accounts when you had your experience with it SJ and others and see if there's any sort of similarity.
Something be unexpectedly strange though.
@Revelate wrote:Yeah specifically where you had Not Using Revolving Credit (Experian reason code from their interface) with a bunch of accounts reporting.
I have a further datapoint on this as my score recovered, now I'm wondering if there's more going on rather than being a CMS issue... and the resultant score shift sure looks like an all zeros magnitude change at least.
3/10: EX FICO 2 - 765
- CSR: 875/43500
- DCU: 28/500
- Amex Zync $10
- Short Account History (AAOA)
- Accounts with Balances
- Not Using Revolving Credit
- Seeking Credit (inquiries)
3/11: EX FICO 2 - 776 +11 points
- CSR: 875/43500
- DCU: 28/500
- Amex Zync $10
- CFU: 1685/25000
- Short Account History (AAOA)
- Accounts with Balances
- Seeking Credit (inquiries)
- Many New Accounts (AOYA of some flavor)
It appears as though either there's something weird with my file and at least what I read of yours too SJ, where some accounts may not be counted for revolving utilization that we would normally expect to be counted under EX FICO 2... and since this is a mortgage score, it matters. Also I know my HELOC doesn't appear to count too, this looks potentially narrow.
None of these (other than the Amex and the HELOC) are an issue on FICO 8, it's stayed at 827 this entire time.
I don't want to do much with testing this now because I'm less than 2 months out from ticking over 5 years AAOA so need to stabilize balances but I'd be interested to see your listing of accounts when you had your experience with it SJ and others and see if there's any sort of similarity.
Something be unexpectedly strange though.
When mine added "not using revolving credit" I had 8 revolving balances reporting, making lots of use of revolving credit 
Would you mind listing tradeline, balance, CL please SJ?
@Revelate wrote:
Would you mind listing tradeline, balance, CL please SJ?
What's the difference between tradeline and CL?
I think Rev is just looking to see what type of tradeline it is perhaps.
While I don't know about the scoring model being discussed here in terms of quirks and what it "sees" as revolving credit use, I just noticed for the 3rd month in a row I'm getting the same 2 negative reason statements on my Synchrony (Lowe's) account when I do in fact have revolving balances. This is of course a TU FICO 8 score, but at the time this score generated I had two reported balances, $195 on my Citi card ($23k limit) and $280 or so on a Chase card ($10k limit). My other 5 revolvers on TU had $0 reported balances.
@SouthJamaica wrote:
@Revelate wrote:
Would you mind listing tradeline, balance, CL please SJ?What's the difference between tradeline and CL?
Tradeline = Amex / Barclays / DCU / etc.
Balance = current balance
CL = credit limit
Something is apparently discounting things, could be any of the three. More information more better... and suddenly I'm not thinking people were crazy when reporting AZEO fails when apparently leaving a balance on a single card doesn't work on some FICO models.
@Revelate wrote:
@SouthJamaica wrote:
@Revelate wrote:
Would you mind listing tradeline, balance, CL please SJ?What's the difference between tradeline and CL?
Tradeline = Amex / Barclays / DCU / etc.
Balance = current balance
CL = credit limit
Something is apparently discounting things, could be any of the three. More information more better... and suddenly I'm not thinking people were crazy when reporting AZEO fails when apparently leaving a balance on a single card doesn't work on some FICO models.
[see below]
@Revelate wrote:
@SouthJamaica wrote:
@Revelate wrote:
Would you mind listing tradeline, balance, CL please SJ?What's the difference between tradeline and CL?
Tradeline = Amex / Barclays / DCU / etc.
Balance = current balance
CL = credit limit
Something is apparently discounting things, could be any of the three. More information more better... and suddenly I'm not thinking people were crazy when reporting AZEO fails when apparently leaving a balance on a single card doesn't work on some FICO models.
I don't believe anything was being discounted @Revelate .
On the day it reported "not using revolving credit" it was
chase cc 10150/40000
credit union cc 6762/43500
credit union cc 4350/30000
credit union ploc 4103/15000
credit union cc 2460/10000
credit union ploc 2324/10000
credit union cc 59/20000
credit union cc 19/20000
6 days later the "not using revolving credit" code dropped off when the revolving accounts were as follows:
credit union cc 14839/30000
credit union ploc 10549/40000
chase cc 10025/40000
credit union cc 5993/43500
credit union cc 3572/13000
credit union ploc 3092/15000
credit union ploc 2778/10000
credit union cc 2682/10000
credit union cc 2167/20000
credit union cc 1575/20000
santander cc 31/9000