@Anonymous wrote:This is beyond discouraging, its infuriating.
@I'm a member here @ MyFico. Received a couple of "Alerts" as I do every month after my creditors report my monthly payments, new balances, etc.
I've been making consistent monthly payments on a particular credit line. Min due ea month is $40, I pay $340/month. I overpay because I intend to pay off the balance on this line within 12 months, for 0% fees. (If you go over their 12 months, this line hits you hard.) For the most part, I've seen (slow) score improvements every month as payments get reported to the 3B's. This month, I didn't pay my usual $340, I paid $60. Still more than min due; and everything in perfect standing...
MyFico Alert shows the balance change (good; as it's now from 18% to 17% utilization), and it shows the new balance which is lower + correct. Then out of nowhere, EXPERIAN dings me 9 PTS!!!
Is there no way to dispute when the 3B's screw you over on one of these score changes? Only when they report something incorrect?
How is it that if you bust your utilization beyond recommended, the 3B's can ding you nearly 100 PTS in one quick hit (that happened to me earlier in this same credit line; I've learned from it), but when you make consistent payments very month, they crawl back up a few PTS here or there. I'm not into conspiracies, but the system is rigged in their favor.
My question here is about what I can do about this 9PT drop on EXPERIAN, which is accompanied (in the MyFico Alert) by "The balance of one of your accounts has decreased by $60" and "18% > 17% UTIL". Why negative 9PTS? Anything I can do here?
OF NOTE - My EQUIFAX score improved by 6 PTS today for the same balanc + UTIL change. Seems unfair that there's no way to challenge this. PS - when I click "Dispute this change?" Experian conventiently doesn't approve my security questions; and tells me to call into their 800#. Is there a right way to dispute this?
You are making the incorrect assumption that the score change and the other event being reported are interrelated; they often have nothing to do with each other. Your score wouldn't drop because your balance was reduced.
SouthJamaica wrote:
You are making the incorrect assumption that the score change and the other event being reported are interrelated; they often have nothing to do with each other. Your score wouldn't drop because your balance was reduced.
+1
SouthJamaica is 100% correct. The only ways you would get dinged for paying down debt is if you paid off your only installment loan or only mortgage. Ding. Coutnerintinuative, yes. You could also be dinged if you paid down all of your revolving debt and let every card report a zero balance. Again, counterintuative. But that's how credit scoring works. Going from 18% to 17% UTIL will not cause a score drop.
Something else changed on your Experian report. You would need to pull a new EX report and compare, line by line, to the last EX report. You can't rely on the alert as being the cause of the score change. An old account may have dropped off changing your AAoA. You wouldn't get an alert for that. MyFico alerts to certain triggers, not every little change to your report. The MyFico alerts and score increases/decreases are not always related. This is discussed throughout these forums at length. Regardless, your beef wouldn't be with EX. They are the data furnishers. Your beef would be with FICO who takes that data to create your scores. If the data is correct what is there to dispute with EX? You also can't compare EQ to EX. Different CRA's, and even with identical data your score could be different between the two since they look at the data differently.
