FICO Scoring Craziness

[Junejer]

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@Thomas_Thumb wrote:

Score is being penalized for "lack of recent revolving activity". It is not an all zero penalty. In fact, I received that penalty even when balances over $1000 reported on my AMEX and an AU credit card. The AU card and AMEX charge are ignored by Fico in the revolving use metric.

Again, the penalty is "lack of recent revolving activity". Fico does not have an all zeros penalty. They just happen to use a zero balance as an antiquated method for signalling a revolving account was not used.

If card issuers were required to report total charges during a month as well as total payments, then more robust methods could be used to ascertain activity. Many card issuers don't want the added hassle/expense or reporting that data. So, zero balance remains as the indicator.

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They may not call it that, but that's what it is. All data points to it being such.

[Junejer]

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@NYC_Fella wrote:

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@Junejer wrote:Thus, I am carrying a balance of $101 on my car loan for credit mix.

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Curious; how do you do that?

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I was accelerating my payments. On my last payment, I paid all except $101.36. I figured if I kept it over $100, they wouldn't just forgive the amount and send me a title. So far, I am correct. My next payment is February 1, 2026.

[SouthJamaica]

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@NYC_Fella wrote:

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@Junejer wrote:Thus, I am carrying a balance of $101 on my car loan for credit mix.

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Curious; how do you do that?

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You have to have the right lender.

Some lenders will let the "next payment date" just sit there when you prepay the bulk of the loan (Alliant, PenFed, NFCU).

Most others will accelerate it, though, so you can't just leave a small balance due.

[Junejer]

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@SouthJamaica wrote:

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@NYC_Fella wrote:

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@Junejer wrote:Thus, I am carrying a balance of $101 on my car loan for credit mix.

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Curious; how do you do that?

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You have to have the right lender.

Some lenders will let the "next payment date" just sit there when you prepay the bulk of the loan (Alliant, PenFed, NFCU).

Most others will accelerate it, though, so you can't just leave a small balance due.

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BoA. I initially was going to pay it down to $1,000, but didn't want to pay interest on that amount for as long as I'm going to keep it there.

[Junejer]

So, EQ finally reported the $0 balance today on CK. Waiting for MF to catch up. I'll be AZEO and wonder if I get any points for it. I'm not expecting more than one to three, if any at all.

[Junejer]

MF caught up today. Now AZEO with $41 reporting. No points. Meh.

[Thomas_Thumb]

As expected. Given the # of cards in your profile You can probably report 1-3 cards with small balances with no change in score. Perhaps 1-7 or more on EX.

Aging all accounts and inquiries past 12 months is your ticket to 850.

[Creditwiser]

A lot of good posts in this thread. Many points made are spot on IMHO. In case anyone is wondering about the for-profit angle of the game, you only need to look at the current share price of Fair Isaac Corp $793 per share and compare it to the Market Summary chart. If any of us had purchased and held a decent amount of shares between 1990 -2000's, we might not be all that concerned with our scores. 

[Junejer]

A couple of months for all reported accounts to age past 12 months--September 17.

My only INQ on EQ ages one year on August 7. Youngest reported account (car loan) turns one on September 17. EX has two INQs under a year, September 17 and November 9. TU has three INQs under a year, August 20 (2), September 17 (2) and November 9. Those four car INQs in Aug & Sep might only have been one hit.

I won't seek any credit (don't want or need anything) until after November--at least. It'll be interesting which CRA gets there first.

[Junejer]

I'm about to experience a temporary AZ penalty. I was all set for FNBO to report a very small balance, then American Airlines decided they would finally refund my flight and it cleared yesterday as my statement closed. Now I have a negative balance on the card. *sigh*

I originally scheduled our flights on SW, but had to change it (long story, plus will save DW the embarassment). At any rate, when I canceled SW, I had the money going back to my card within a couple of days. American made me do all the work, took forever to respond, then responded that they would only issue a flight credit, even though they immediately credited seat upgrades. I inquired why that was and didn't hear anything for about two weeks, until they informed me that it was being credited two days ago.

I know some of you love American, but I have to say they are a pain to deal with. I had to go to a separate website to request the refund and enter all the information. I had to repeat this for each ticket and each upgrade. Oh, that's after spending over an hour on the phone, speaking with four, yes four, different reps, encountering one very rude rep, two who were so-so (probably thought they were providing good customer service) and one who really wanted to help me. Contrast that with my experience with SW. I was on the phone with a very pleasant rep for about five minutes, who took care of my refund on her end--no need for me to chase around on another website, hoping and praying I did it right and that I said the right thing in my narrative for them to refund me. I'll take the SW experience every day over what I've experienced at AA.