Ok, so last week I got my credit reports and did some FICO simulation scoring with their FICO simulator. One item was to pay down my card balance. I simulated having a balance of about 3%. It said my score would rise from 670 to around 708. So, when I actually did this (my credit card company was very kind and resubmitted my new account information before their monthly cycle--something that they didn't have to do. Let me also preface this by saying I pay my account off every month, but just wised up to the fact that the balance they report is based on what amount says on their billing date, not after I pay! Go figure.) my score only went up to 697. They were 10-15 points off. How can this be? I have verified that nothing changed other than reducing the card balance to 3% utilization.
Does anyone know why the simulator would give an incorrect score? The range it indicated was 708-748 so it was outside the range by a full 13 points.
