Re: Help! Please help me understand

Anonymous · ‎04-02-2017

Hi, thank you everyone. I have the FicoPremier3B. I think I get all new scores every 30 days. I get updates on score throughout the month if they change. Usually when my score goes up or down, it will say something like overall balances increased, or new inquiry. it will usually say something. This update just said my score decreased by 20 points with no further details. I'll follow someone's advice and go to Kredit Karma to see what changed and I guess I'll wait until my next mortgage score. Again, than you.

Anonymous · ‎04-02-2017

@Anonymous wrote:
I received an alert today from MyFICO that my TU score decreased by 20 points today. It didn't give me a reason. I don't have any new debt, haven't applied for anything, my balances are about the same. It doesn't even give a reason. Are these fluctuations normal? I'm planning on buying a house in 2-3 months and I'm freaking out!

Only 20? Count your blessings. In December mine went down over 60 points with the same circumstances and the same lack of reasons. I guess the tide was coming in in Nova Scotia when you pulled.

Anonymous · ‎04-02-2017

@Anonymous wrote:
Hi, thank you everyone. I have the FicoPremier3B. I think I get all new scores every 30 days. I get updates on score throughout the month if they change. Usually when my score goes up or down, it will say something like overall balances increased, or new inquiry. it will usually say something. This update just said my score decreased by 20 points with no further details. I'll follow someone's advice and go to Kredit Karma to see what changed and I guess I'll wait until my next mortgage score. Again, than you.

You're not really providing any information. Do our profiles seem similar?

If there was a change, you would have seen it. I experienced the same thing with a 30 point drop and others have, too.

We're trying to help you and others with the same problem.

Anonymous · ‎04-02-2017

Your post is dated for the 1st of the month (April; but unlike Google I don't think myFICO plays April Fool's pranks on its customers).

I suspect that your oldest account just aged off, and your Average Age of Accounts has gone down significantly. (The deletion of an account will not show up explicitly as an event in the alerts you might receive from myFICO.)

Did you have one account that was a few years older than the rest and has been closed for almost ten years?

Anonymous · ‎04-02-2017

I don't subscribe to any of the myFICO products, but what you are saying surprises me, for the following reason. My understanding is that the only time you see a score change is if it is an "alert." And if it is an alert, then some kind of alertable event happened that caused FICO to pull your score again (new account appearing, balance changed, etc.). And if an alertable event happened, then the myFICO product gives you a text description of what that alertable event was.

Thus, it should not be possible to get an alert for a score change without also seeing a text description of what that alertable event was the prompted the score to get run again.

Can someone who is knowledgeable about the myFICO minitoring tools comment?

NRB525 · ‎04-02-2017

@Anonymous wrote:
I don't subscribe to any of the myFICO products, but what you are saying surprises me, for the following reason. My understanding is that the only time you see a score change is if it is an "alert." And if it is an alert, then some kind of alertable event happened that caused FICO to pull your score again (new account appearing, balance changed, etc.). And if an alertable event happened, then the myFICO product gives you a text description of what that alertable event was.

Thus, it should not be possible to get an alert for a score change without also seeing a text description of what that alertable event was the prompted the score to get run again.

Can someone who is knowledgeable about the myFICO minitoring tools comment?

EQ and EX provide specific balance changes, when a card reports. They show "New Account" and often "Newly Active Account after xx month". They show updates to credit limits when sent by the CCC. They show AMEX Chargers, the reported balance, which of course is not inclued in utilization. They report my closed Citi account as it is paying down, which also is not in utilization. EX also shows Utilization on that card as a percentage From --> To along with balance From --> To.

TU, on the other hand, only notifies "Total balance on All Bankcards" when one or more card balances change. One notice for All Bankcards from TU on that day regardless if you see one or three other cards updating individually on EQ or EX. Regularly, as the four Reasons Codes cycle on TU, they will provide a separate update with the revised list of four Reasons your score is not perfect. I use that to guage things like how many cards are reporting and where that is in the sequence of four Reasons. TU will show a New Account, and the limit, but other than that it does not show individual card balances as they change.

So TU should have at least provided "all bankcards" balance as the trigger for the alert. One would have to look at EX and EQ alerts to see which card reported the balance.

Now, having said all that, I do not have any lurking baddies in my account, so I have no experience with "non events' triggering TU alerts. I have enough "real events" going on to drown out any non events

High Bal Jan 2009 $116k on $146k limits 80% Util.
Oct 2014 $46k on $127k 36% util EQ 722 TU 727 EX 727
April 2018 $18k on $344k 5% util EQ 806 TU 810 EX 812
Jan 2019 $7.6k on $360k EQ 832 TU 839 EX 831
March 2021 $33k on $312k EQ 796 TU 798 EX 801
May 2021 Paid all Installments and Mortgages, one new Mortgage EQ 761 TY 774 EX 777
April 2022 EQ=811 TU=807 EX=805 - TU VS 3.0 765

Anonymous · ‎04-03-2017

@Anonymous wrote:
I don't subscribe to any of the myFICO products, but what you are saying surprises me, for the following reason. My understanding is that the only time you see a score change is if it is an "alert." And if it is an alert, then some kind of alertable event happened that caused FICO to pull your score again (new account appearing, balance changed, etc.). And if an alertable event happened, then the myFICO product gives you a text description of what that alertable event was.

Thus, it should not be possible to get an alert for a score change without also seeing a text description of what that alertable event was the prompted the score to get run again.

Can someone who is knowledgeable about the myFICO minitoring tools comment?

My point exactly. Every time I receive a score change, it's because it was triggered by an event. Sometimes there's a lot of detail like which credit card and how much the balance decreased. Other times, it'll just say the balance on all your bank cards has decreased. Until now, it will alays say something. This 20 point drop has no information. Thas was my question.

Anonymous · ‎04-03-2017

That is just how the Transunion alerts come in, without too much detail. The TU alerts I've received have either reflected a change in balances, or a score change with a list of factors. The alerts for the other bureaus are more detailed but sometimes the event triggering the alert is not the event that caused the score change. None of the detailed explanations of myFICO alerts that I have received from any of the bureau have related to the absence of an account, only to changes to accounts still on the file.

(It seems that the technology for generating the alerts is proprietary to the individual credit bureaus -- not myFICO -- and each one uses a different system.)

As other posters have suggested, a careful look at the whole TU credit file is the best way to pin down the cause. If you have an older TU report saved or in hardcopy you can do a before-and-after comparison. In addition to a free weekly TU report from creditkarma.com, you can get the TU report weekly from mybankrate.com at no charge. If you are a Capital One cardholder you can also access it weekly through their free CreditWise service... if you sign up for all three and stagger them throughout the week you can have a look at your TU report roughly every other day while you are in the application process. You can also pull the full disclosure for each bureau for free once a year at the government mandated site, annualcreditreport.com.

If this is inconvenient, or you are unable to readliy locate the needle in the haystack of credit data, you might be able to infer a bit by comparing the last TransUnion score alert to this one. The score alerts come with a list of the factors inhibiting your score, and by comparing these factors and the order they appear in the two alerts, you just might be able to deduce the type of change affecting the score.

Good luck with your scores.

Anonymous · ‎04-03-2017

Not sure about OP, but in my case, nothing is missing, nothing is added. There is a very minor reduction in bankcard balance, which also carried the score change to the alert. The negatives on my account again are lates on an account that has since been paid and closed as of over a year ago, and an account that is still listed as deliquent, but closed with a $0 balance (like it had been charged off, even though it was not) from 2012. There has been no activity on either of them.

Is it possible that algorithms may update in patches and cause some rebucketing? If my negatives were suddently weighted more heavily, or the amount of my credit that is new also weighted more heavily 2/3 of the way through March, then it would explain all of the wild swings that we have seen at least with TU that appear to have no apparent cause.

SouthJamaica · ‎04-03-2017

@Anonymous wrote:
I don't subscribe to any of the myFICO products, but what you are saying surprises me, for the following reason. My understanding is that the only time you see a score change is if it is an "alert." And if it is an alert, then some kind of alertable event happened that caused FICO to pull your score again (new account appearing, balance changed, etc.). And if an alertable event happened, then the myFICO product gives you a text description of what that alertable event was.

Thus, it should not be possible to get an alert for a score change without also seeing a text description of what that alertable event was the prompted the score to get run again.

Can someone who is knowledgeable about the myFICO minitoring tools comment?

Actually, CGID, sometimes you get an alert that your score has increased or decreased, with no other alertable event mentioned. Here, e.g., is a nasty one I just received: