Has anyone noticed anomalies with FICO 5,4,2 recently?

[Anonymous]

This seems like a pretty odd algorithm if that's actually why my score went down. As someone who builds algorithms for a living, the rationale of getting a different output from the same data because a negative factor has aged a certain amount just does not make sense. My score was dinged once 2 years ago, I made an effort to fix it over 2 years, and now because it's hit the 2 year mark, I'm being dinged even more significantly? 

[SouthJamaica]

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@Anonymous wrote:

This seems like a pretty odd algorithm if that's actually why my score went down. As someone who builds algorithms for a living, the rationale of getting a different output from the same data because a negative factor has aged a certain amount just does not make sense. My score was dinged once 2 years ago, I made an effort to fix it over 2 years, and now because it's hit the 2 year mark, I'm being dinged even more significantly? 

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Well we don't know for a fact that that's what happened.

But there are indeed many "pretty odd" things about the FICO algorithms. My favorite examples are (a) the penalty for paying all revolvers down to zero, (b) the penalty for paying off one's last or only installment loan, and (c) the penalty for a card on which you are an authorized user reporting a zero balance.

While I know there are scorecards, I don't really think we know so much about how things work. And I have a hunch that when you get bumped up to a higher level scorecard, there may be a glitch in your scores, but it is not 70 points and it is not long term. 

[Anonymous]

@SouthJamaica those are interesting indeed. I'll have to be sure to not pay off my revolving accounts to $0. 

[Anonymous]

@Anonymous There’s no doubt to me that that is exactly what happened. We’ve got too much evidence already did that’s exactly what happens on Experian and TransUnion at two years with a delinquency; it’s not just coincidentally happening to everyone at that threshold.

And I understand it doesn’t seem rational that as the late ages, your score should go down but what happens is everything is weighted differently because you’re being compared to a different sub population, so as a result you’re at the bottom of this group where you were at the top of that group.

[Anonymous]

But as SouthJamaica said, your scores will increase with time as you take proper actions.

And there is a arguable rationale even for those other idiosyncrasies. For instance if everything reports zero, they feel like you’re not using your credit, so it cannot be evaluated; remember it’s a point in time algorithm.

As for loans, when you get one, there’s not much of a change, but once you pay it down to certain thresholds, you get bonus points; so when you close the loans, you lose the bonus points.

I can’t explain the authorized user all zero penalty I haven’t came up with an excuse for that I think it was a error.

[Anonymous]

@Anonymous on the positive side of things your version 8 scores should've went up, did they?

[coreysw12]

Haven't read this whole thread, but just wanted to chime in and mention my own experience that FICO 5,4,2 are absolutely brutal about past baddies. The other scoring models seem to be a lot more forgiving. See my scores in my signature - Fico 5,4,2 are regularly 50 or more points below all of the other scoring models for me. I suspect it's because a few old chargeoffs that remain on my reports are being more heavily weighted by those models.

As to why your scores dropped rapidly for no apparent reason, it's tough to say. Maybe a creditor updated the status on an old delinquent, in such a way that the newer scoring models weren't affected much but the older 5,4,2 models were heavily affected by it? Looking back on my old delinquent accounts, I've noticed that once in a while little things on them get changed from time to time - such as the reason for closure, or the number of late payments, etc. So possibly that's the reason?

[Anonymous]

It happens to everybody with delinquencies when the youngest one ages to two years, is that a coincidence?

It’s pretty much explicit because for instance when Revelate tested, he then saw new account reason codes and you don’t get those on dirty cards, so it’s obvious that he had switched to a clean card at two years.

The same with @Ficoproblems247 on his; you can’t get more explicit than that. Those codes do not exist on dirty (edited) cards; they weren’t there before the score change and reassignment, but they were afterwards.

If you were to go get a new revolver, you’d get a "new account" reason code now because you’re now on a clean scorecard on the mortgage models. Before September that would’ve not been possible because you were in a dirty scorecard.

Edit: that's one way you can tell if you're on a dirty scorecard or clean scorecard is whether or not you have a new account reason codes. They don't exist in dirty scorecards. That's one way that we can test for certain scorecard reassignments.