I don't think switching buckets is anywhere close to that common TBH, and a 5 point drop is nothing to get concerned about. It takes a non-trivial change to move buckets even with 12 of them available in the FICO 8 model.
There's wierd idiosyncracies inside a bucket though, which doesn't help when the bureaus behave differently. Stupid and careless example (as I'm not characterizing it fully): I lost 11 points on EX, 12 points on EQ, 12 points on TU when I had all my revolvers at $0... a known and well characterized penalty. I gained +23 on EX, +18 on EQ, and +12 on TU in fixing that, but the TU 12 points while identical gain vs the drop, moved in 2 steps (6 + 6 = 12).
That's not something go to blame on bucketing: namely most times we see a "is this bucketing?" question, it isn't, and that pattern has held on other credit oriented forums too.
I love how layered the BS is in the financial industry... just more rigamarole to keep people where the banks want them: just high enough to approve them, and just low enough so they can charge them up the wazoo. I can't count how many threads I've read recently of people in the 800's getting denials. I love it. Complete and utter bull.
@805orbust wrote:I love how layered the BS is in the financial industry... just more rigamarole to keep people where the banks want them: just high enough to approve them, and just low enough so they can charge them up the wazoo. I can't count how many threads I've read recently of people in the 800's getting denials. I love it. Complete and utter bull.
FICO or any other scores are only one part of the UW criteria: they get you in the door, in some cases they determine your rate, they have next to zero impact beyond that as to whether you get approved or not.
We talk about maxxing out different parts of the FICO scorecard; by a similar token, if you have an 800 FICO score, you've maxxed out that one individual element in the underwriting scorecard (which admittedly varies by lender but 760+ is gold plated). That isn't enough to get an approval: even if I had an 850 score currently (not damned likely, ever, but for the sake of the discussion), without income as I'm studenting for the next two years, I'm unlikely to be approved for anything which isn't a student loan, a deep subprime loan, or something secured by an asset.
Agreed, however that being said, you do know that EVERY single score is a FAKO right? I mean think about it. Same data, same snapshot, and Fair Isaac sell you 28 (28!!!!) different versions for $30 a month. Puhleese. Combine that with the literally hundreds of scoring models out there (Vantage crap, and now internal models) and you realize it's nothing but blue pill bullcrap Matrix style. It's obviously ALL about the supporting data, but unless you KNOW for sure what bureau and what scoring model your perspective creditor is pulling, it's a shot in the dark. Every score is a FAKO.
@sarge12 wrote:But in truth, it does not matter, because if you achieve 800+ scores on Fico08, your scores will be good on all scoring models most likely. Pay your bills on time, keep utilization low, do not have a large number of inqueries, have both installment loans and revolving loans, and in time high scores will be achieved on all models.
Totally agree. And that was my point. All these scores are fake. Now for us who have fun with this, we're informed. I feel sorry for the good, hard working people who are penalized because they just pay their bills on time. They don't know about all this other crap that goes into it and it's easy to tell people to Google something, but how many years was that not an option? It's sick actually.
I have come to realize that all CRAs are not pulling data from the same point in time for 3B reports. This can complicate comparison among CRAs.
For example, I had 5 open accounts reporting balances for EQ and TU when I pulled my July 3B report. However, EX only showed 3 open accounts. This indicates results were caught in an account update transition in July with two PIF accounts not having updated on EQ and TU.For me it appears that EX data is slightly quicker to update than EQ and TU.
The next 3B pull I did just 3 weeks later showed 2 open accounts with balances on all 3 CRAs. (only one screen shot captured at the time)
Bottom line here is comparing the 3 CRAs against one another - even with the same 3B pulls can be skewed. To avoid this I try to pull 3Bs in the same timeframe each month during a 14 day window when I know none of my accounts are updating. For me that is from the 26th of one month to the 10th of the next month.
I jumped the gun in July with an early pull. Glad I did as that led to the August pull which uncovered some very useful data relative to how NPSL charge and AU credit cards are being treated with my file.