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Hey all, trying to build up my credit systematically to buy a house. Just today, I saw a 10 point drop from Experian after I paid down one of my cards by 40 dollars. I would imagine that the score would increase rather tha decrease. Any way, Experian told me to talk to Fico and Fico tells me to call Experian and I can't figure out how to fix this or who to talk to about it. Any ideas?
@aerias wrote:Hey all, trying to build up my credit systematically to buy a house. Just today, I saw a 10 point drop from Experian after I paid down one of my cards by 40 dollars. I would imagine that the score would increase rather tha decrease. Any way, Experian told me to talk to Fico and Fico tells me to call Experian and I can't figure out how to fix this or who to talk to about it. Any ideas?
most likely something else is at play. account aging. an account being closed. balance chasing. we would need to see your credit report before and after the score.
$40 is unlikely to move your score even 1 point in either direction
Hello AllZero, thank you for taking the time to answer my question. I admit that I have no idea what those mean. Would you happen to know of any resources that I can explore to learn about those?
Thanks, jamaster14! Right?! That's what I was thinking. I was under the impression that the "see what changed" option would show every factor that led to the decrease. It sometimes feels like there's no way to truly control what happens to ones fico score. And no one seems accountable or accessible for resolving issues. Glad I signed up to the forums, maybe I'll learn differently.
I would recommend reading the below from ABCD2199
The Truth about Credit Card Utilization
My 11 Rules to Credit Rebuilding
FICO Score: What to pay down first?
Here is the Master Thread of information from @Anonymous
General Scoring Primer and Version 8 Master Thread rev.5.17.20
@aerias wrote:Hello AllZero, thank you for taking the time to answer my question. I admit that I have no idea what those mean. Would you happen to know of any resources that I can explore to learn about those?
Hello @aerias . How many credit cards do you have? How many are reporting a balance or are they all reporting zero balance?
Hello AllZero, thanks for those resources. I'll check them out shortly! As to your last questions, I have three credit cards, the balances are all relatively low but not zero. I've left them this way intentionally since I've been told that getting them down to zero might not be a good idea.
I recently paid off 4 card balances, Capital One $275.00, Ebay Mastercard $296.75, Amazon $5.43, Fortiva $223.00, all in the last two weeks or so.
Got a phone alert from Credit Sessame, "score drop".
I'm thinking they pulled the last reporting, and most of the recent pay offs hasn't reported until the next reporting date.
If anything is to be learned, creditor's wont hesitate for a moment to report a late, even 1 day. But on time payments, or pay off's, will take weeks, before they update the information.
They have an interest to keep reporting in a lag state, and that's interest.
For example many creditors now will disclose to you if they gave you credit, that did not have the best interest rate, they make available.
So by taking their sweet time, it gives the banking industry a lot of extra time to approve you at a higher interest rate, although reality doesn't reflect the true risk.
It's the same logic as to why creditor's raking in millions, and many billions from credit lines, they each use their own FICO version.
It's difficult as a consumer to truly feel anything is fair, when one considers, FICO 4, is not a very good version, compared to FICO 8. Not sure about FICO 9 yet myself. But I do know the scoring between version 4 and 8, are huge differences, and maybe in part indifference. It's hardly accurate I suppose, when scoring models vary so widely, therefor no actual standard from a consumers point of view, that really exists. As the differences easily skews the data by supposition. Rather than actual data points.