FICO drop frustration

[CM23]

I've been closely monitoring my FICO for several months and making adjustments as necessary; however, today I disputed an old student loan on Ex that was transferred and closed 9 years ago. It only reported to Ex and my intention has been to get all 3 reports to report as identitical as possible since they are all different (TU 714, EX 654, EQ 653)... but... just opening this dispute on EX dropped my score 9 points immediately. I have about 20 student loan accounts all either deferred or closed, this particular one was only open for 12 months 10 years ago and only had a balance of $2667. Did it really have THAT much impact or does simply disputing anything look negative in general?

[Anonymous]

It's not often that disputes drop scores.  Many times disputed accounts while under dispute are ignored by FICO, so it's as if they don't exist.  Generally people tend to dispute negative accounts, so the [temporary] removal of a negative account isn't going to cause a score drop in most cases... unless it was something like your oldest account by a long shot, which would temporarily drop your AoOA significantly (for example).  

It sounds to me like you received an alert regarding the dispute.  Is that true?  Keep in mind any score change provided at the time of the alert doesn't have to be at all related to the alert itself.  If I had to guess, I'd say this is the case going on here and that your score drop came from another factor, unrelated to your initiated dispute. 

[CM23]

Hi, thank you for your reply. I did receive an alert stating the dispute was officially open and in the same minute received a 2nd alert that my score decreased by 9 points.

5 days ago my EX score dropped 20 points, but I this is because a car payment was incorrectly moved from April to May by the creditor following a dispute. The creditor did not change the information on TU or EQ, even though all 3 were disputed.

Sometimes I feel credit reporting is pouring water from 1 cup to another.

[RonM21]

Yes, this can be frustrating when trying to clean up your report. But once the dust finally settles from you cleaning up your reports, moving forward, you should be on to big things. Keep your head up!

[Anonymous]

It sounds like the closed account you disputed was real and there was nothing incorrect in the data listed in it.  You just didn't like the fact that it appeared in one bureau and not the other two.

If so, there are three points worth raising:

(1)  There's no problem with your three reports not being exactly identical.  That's a very common situation.

(2)  The dispute process was not the right choice.  Disputes are for when there is false information on the report.  When consumers dispute true records they can eventually be flagged by the CRA as a person who makes "frivolous" disputes.

(3)  The benign account would have fallen off your reports in the next year anyway.  Disputing things that will fall off soon is often not the best use of your time, especially when there is nothing harmful in the record. 

[CM23]

You're absolutely right! I've gotten so impatient during this process that sometimes it feels I should be doing something (frivolous dispute). Thank you for your input!