FICO score decreased after paying down credit card account

[aerias]

Man, how do you beat this game? Every time I feel like my score is getting better as I pay off my debts, some seemingly arbitrary happens. I had paid down my debt by about 300 dollars recently and it didn't register a blip, but suddenly someone buys a charged-off account for way less than that and wham, score drops. It deincentivizes settlement agreements, since once you start settling, as you all mention, the credit bureaus start alerting collectors. And now I'm trying to preempt this by just finding ways to pay off my remaining charge-offs before anything else happens. And then, get this, today, out of nowhere, EQ drops my score by 19 points for a supposed missed payments and if there's something I've been doing well and making sure I NEVER miss a payment and have not. In fact, there is no mention of a missed payment anywhere on my EQ report! Why do they get to do whatever they want?! So frustrating. It's like, "oh you want to buy a house, eh, well, let's make some money! We'll decide when you can get a house!" Ugh. Sorry for the rant but any insights/reflections would be appreciated, friends.

[joeyv1985]

Aeris,

I feel for you. I had an account go from $6(yes $6) to $0 and Equifax knocked my FICO score down 4 points. Conversely, Transunion and Experian raised my scores 4-6 pts. I zeroed in on my CSP that crossed the 50% CU threshold on 7/21 as the culprit. The following day, 7/22, Equifax dropped my score 13 points. Why would they do it again 3 weeks later? Experian dropped my score by 11 pts on 7/22 and Transunion dropped it by 13 pts on 7/21 and nothing of the sort happened. Very confusing. 

[Anonymous]

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@aerias wrote:

Man, how do you beat this game? Every time I feel like my score is getting better as I pay off my debts, some seemingly arbitrary happens. I had paid down my debt by about 300 dollars recently and it didn't register a blip, but suddenly someone buys a charged-off account for way less than that and wham, score drops. It deincentivizes settlement agreements, since once you start settling, as you all mention, the credit bureaus start alerting collectors. And now I'm trying to preempt this by just finding ways to pay off my remaining charge-offs before anything else happens. And then, get this, today, out of nowhere, EQ drops my score by 19 points for a supposed missed payments and if there's something I've been doing well and making sure I NEVER miss a payment and have not. In fact, there is no mention of a missed payment anywhere on my EQ report! Why do they get to do whatever they want?! So frustrating. It's like, "oh you want to buy a house, eh, well, let's make some money! We'll decide when you can get a house!" Ugh. Sorry for the rant but any insights/reflections would be appreciated, friends.

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@aerias what do you mean for a supposed missed payment but there is no missed payment?

are you sure they sold the debt instead of assigning it?

[Anonymous]

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@joeyv1985 wrote:

Aeris,

I feel for you. I had an account go from $6(yes $6) to $0 and Equifax knocked my FICO score down 4 points. Conversely, Transunion and Experian raised my scores 4-6 pts. I zeroed in on my CSP that crossed the 50% CU threshold on 7/21 as the culprit. The following day, 7/22, Equifax dropped my score 13 points. Why would they do it again 3 weeks later? Experian dropped my score by 11 pts on 7/22 and Transunion dropped it by 13 pts on 7/21 and nothing of the sort happened. Very confusing. 

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@joeyv1985 what do you mean do it again three weeks later? if you had 2 score drops there had to be 2 different causitive events. As for bureaus going up while another goes down, that's because of the delayed alerts and the delayed updates by the bureaus to their own files, usually.  

[joeyv1985]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@joeyv1985 wrote:

Aeris,

I feel for you. I had an account go from $6(yes $6) to $0 and Equifax knocked my FICO score down 4 points. Conversely, Transunion and Experian raised my scores 4-6 pts. I zeroed in on my CSP that crossed the 50% CU threshold on 7/21 as the culprit. The following day, 7/22, Equifax dropped my score 13 points. Why would they do it again 3 weeks later? Experian dropped my score by 11 pts on 7/22 and Transunion dropped it by 13 pts on 7/21 and nothing of the sort happened. Very confusing. 

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@joeyv1985 what do you mean do it again three weeks later? if you had 2 score drops there had to be 2 different causitive events. As for bureaus going up while another goes down, that's because of the delayed alerts and the delayed updates by the bureaus to their own files, usually.  

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If that's the case, I'd like to see that report. All three scores, Equi, Trns and Exp dropped 11-13 points after my CSP preferred reported on 7/21. Fast forward 3 weeks later, Citi DC reports a decrease from $6 to $0. Equi drops 4, while the other 2 go up based on the latest change? Tell me what popped up in my report on Equifax that didn't on the other 2? Installment loans were paid on time and balances have decreased. No new inquiries. Nothing, absolutely nothing. That's what ticks me off. BTW, we discussed this on another thread.

https://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Understanding-FICO-Scoring/Equifax-Fico-8-score-drop/td-p/6103753

[aerias]

Hi @Anonymous, thanks for getting back to me. It looks like I had made a mistake: after some research, I was able to find an account with actual missed payments. I couldn't find it on myEquifax as it did not show the account at all, for whatever reason, whereas by generating a Fico 3B and a free report through annual credit report, I was able to find it. I had made the rookie assumption that if it did not feature prominently, and was not categorized as a "collection" that it would not affect me. (Curiously enough, it only recently lived in the CO section.) 

At any rate, I'm still learning all of this. Thanks for all your work -and that of others- on the primer you all worked on. I'm still working through the Scorecard 8 thread, but so far it's making sense. In fact, that's what inspired me to just pay the above mentioned account in full, as it was my oldest account (Moneylion's at a whopping 180 days old- don't even get me started on their nefarious debt trap model - there's an interesting class action online. I had just thrown my hands up and given up with them after they just get going at my bank account- being poor at the time and not knowing what to do, I made the mistake of just ignoring it. I know.). Anyway, I imagine a GST might be in order there (also learned that from the primer). Now, I'll just keep chipping away at the other few accounts and hopefully get rid of all the debt within the year. Thank you.

[Anonymous]

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@aerias wrote:

Hi @Anonymous, thanks for getting back to me. It looks like I had made a mistake: after some research, I was able to find an account with actual missed payments. I couldn't find it on myEquifax as it did not show the account at all, for whatever reason, whereas by generating a Fico 3B and a free report through annual credit report, I was able to find it. I had made the rookie assumption that if it did not feature prominently, and was not categorized as a "collection" that it would not affect me. (Curiously enough, it only recently lived in the CO section.) 

At any rate, I'm still learning all of this. Thanks for all your work -and that of others- on the primer you all worked on. I'm still working through the Scorecard 8 thread, but so far it's making sense. In fact, that's what inspired me to just pay the above mentioned account in full, as it was my oldest account (Moneylion's at a whopping 180 days old- don't even get me started on their nefarious debt trap model - there's an interesting class action online. I had just thrown my hands up and given up with them after they just get going at my bank account- being poor at the time and not knowing what to do, I made the mistake of just ignoring it. I know.). Anyway, I imagine a GST might be in order there (also learned that from the primer). Now, I'll just keep chipping away at the other few accounts and hopefully get rid of all the debt within the year. Thank you.

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@aerias thank you for the kind words and welcome to the forum, we are glad to have you and I'm glad you are enjoying and learning from the primer!

We are still learning as well and I do update it regularly, so check the last date edited at the bottom of each post.

Glad you figured out the reason for the score change at at least it's not showing on Equifax. Good luck I hope you're successful with the GST!