I am confused and upset... FICO Score 200pts lower than other scores

[Anonymous]

For a big, strong guy, I am a bit shaken and upset right now. I just bought a house and was approved for a loan with no problem. My credit score was 744 for my Equifax, and 700 for my Transunion (old Tax bill that was cleared up recently brought that up to over 740 as well) and my Experian was high as well. 

Here's the problem: I went to apply for a credit card today (American Express), and although my yearly salary is high, everything is fine (no debt at all prior to my mortgage), the denial letter in the email said that my FICO score was 546... NEARLY 200 POINTS LOWER! 

I paid off debt, have a couple store cards that are low balanced, and pay everything on time... yet my FICO scores are so LOW! Why? How do I get them up? I see no options or any ways to dispute anything. There are no real details other than "there are delinquencies..." where?! Why is no other report showing them??? My car was paid off for a while; student loans paid off; taxes paid off; etc. What more do I have to do???

[thornback]

Amex uses your Experian FICO score- so if your Experian was 700+ at the time you bought your home, then something must have appeared on your report sometime afterwards for it to now be 546. Do you have you have access to your Experian report? If not, you can gain immediate access, for free, using the following link since you have been denied credit:
https://www.experian.com/reportaccess/

That access link is really good because it provides the digital version of the hard (paper) copy of your report- so you'll see every detail without the added nonsense of a fancy user interface and it prints well.

Review and report back. Once we know what the poblem is, we can help you with a plan to try and fix it.

[Anonymous]

First things, first - breathe.  Whatever is wrong can be fixed.

When was the last time you saw your actual Fico scores ?  Something has to be there to cause the score drop since you bought the house.  It could very well be wrong information however without seeing what's on your report, we wont be able to offer advice on how to correct it.

Hang in there, gather some information and folks here will help.

[Anonymous]

OP, do you use any credit monitoring software?  I'd suggest pulling your hard copy credit reports, but for starters you can use online CMS software like Credit Karma to hopefully find a red flag or two.  A 200 point drop is extremely significant and one that can only happen from two things... the introduction of major negative information to a clean report or going from ideal utilization to maxed out utilization.  You said in your original post that utilization is low, so that only leaves major negative information.  You're going to have to figure out what this negative information is and then address it.

[arkane]

Go to FreeCreditScore.com and check your EX 8 score and report for free. Then sign up for Credit Karma and use that to look through your EQ and TU reports, but make sure you ignore the score since they give VantageScore 3.0 which nobody uses.

As said, a 200 point drop could only be due to MAJOR negative information. Something is definitely not right.