ITS TRUE, LEAVE A SMALL BALANCE! plus another question about fico….

[Apexcrest123]

Hey guys....

so basically i opened up 6 accounts in the lastt 6 months, all credit cards.  The only one that has a balance is the Authorized user capital one account i have with my wife.  Its strange because on my experian report it says all zeros besides that account because i pay in full. But somewhere i read that AU accounts dont count for this.  And you guys have told me consistently to leave around a ten dollar balance. Well somehow, my amazon store card reported a4 dollar balance and my account went from 721 fico to 735 overnight!  So its true, authroized user accounts dont factor into the equation of utilization, so why do they even put that on my experian report that i have an 11 percent balance from my Au account?  Maybe its just a metric to help you do your own financial statistics.

also, very important question.   Why does transunion report a different score, 680.  Do card companies like capital one and such use fico 8 scoring?  Or a mix of fico 8 and vantage 3.0?

[FlaDude]

---

@Apexcrest123 wrote:

also, very important question.   Why does transunion report a different score, 680.  Do card companies like capital one and such use fico 8 scoring?  Or a mix of fico 8 and vantage 3.0?

---

From years of reading here, I've never heard of a CC company using Vantage 3.0. CK and similar sites display that score because it is cheaper for them than FICO scores would be. Synchony does use Vantage 4.0 so Vantage is getting a foot in the door there. I think most CC companies use FICO 8, but there are actually 3 flavors: standard, one specifically for auto loans, and one specifically for credit cards. And of course there are three credit bureaus so the scores can vary for each. If TU is way different than EQ or EX, you should get your (free) full reports  from www.annualcreditreport.com and compare to see if different info is reported, and if any of it is incorrect, work to get it corrected. I think some lenders are using the newer FICO 9 in place of 8, FICO 9 also has three flavors.

[Apexcrest123]

I dont have anything different on my reports except equifax reports only 2 inquiries while trnsunion and EX report 3.  They should be a bit similar i would guess,  i have no idea as to why the scores are so far apart.

[FicoMike0]

You've just seen the all zero penalty removed. 14 points for you. I don't know about au accounts, I think they may help with age metrics.

You mention experience report. Are you getting your fico score from the experience app free score? If so, that's your ex fico8 score. I'm guessing you're also getting a free score from the transition app. That's your tu vantagescore3. 

There are 3 credit bureaus, experian, transunion and equifax. Each maintains a report on you. Then, there are score models. The two brands are fico and vantagescore. The most common versions are fico8 and vs3. So, multiplying two versions by three bureaus gives six scores. Now, to complicate things, there is also a vs4 version and a total of 28 fico versions amount the three bureaus.

As to capone, they are infamous for using all three bureaus, most credit cards use only one or two. In my experience, all other cards use either fico8 or fico9. Not capone, they use older fico versions, 2,4 and 5 maybe. Oh, and I think discover uses vs3.

Where were we? Most of us on myfico ignore vantage, since it's name isn't myfico. Also because it's little used. The free plan on myfico provides an Equifax fico8. So, along with the free ex score, you have two of the three fico8 scores. Many banks provide account holders a credit score, with Capone it's tu vs3. Some provide a fico score. There are lists in other posts. You can also get paid subscriptions. One I have tried is credit.com. They have a paid plan that is free if cancelled in 7 days. It gives a bunch of fico scores, including 8&9. 

[FicoMike0]

Looks like you got the same story twice. In short, most of us interested in card credit look at the three fico8 scores. If you get two for free, that's a decent sample. If you want to check all 28, the free 7 day with credit.com will give you a snapshot.

If you see a big difference among the three fico8s, then you need to compare the raw reports from annualcreditreport.com. 

[FicoMike0]

among the cards I have, wells Fargo uses ex fico9, commerce uses tu fico bankcard 9. All others use fico8. 

For me, the version 9s are all a little higher than the 8s. Seem to rise and fall together.

[FicoMike0]

If scores from the 3 bureaus are much different, make sure they are all the same version. The outlier is usually a vs3. The fico8s should be close. The bureau with more hard inquiries will be a little lower, those count against your score. Many banks only pull one bureau, so only that score is affected. For me, I have 4 tu, 2 ex and 0 eq, in the last 12 months.

[Thomas_Thumb]

---

@Apexcrest123 wrote:

Hey guys....

very important question.   Why does transunion report a different score, 680.  Do card companies like capital one and such use fico 8 scoring?  Or a mix of fico 8 and vantage 3.0?

---

There are quite a few CC issuers that report VantageScore 3.0 with TU being the most frequent. My Fidelity Visa provided me a TU VS 3.0 but used Fico TU score 4 for a HP CLI a few years back. My AMEX green card shows a VS3 score online but also provides access to a Fico 8 score. So, both VS and Fico may be available on a specific CC.

Double check to see which credit score is being displayed for each card.

P.S. Discover provides a TU Fico 8 score.

[GZG]

---

@Apexcrest123 wrote:

The only one that has a balance is the Authorized user capital one account i have with my wife.  Its strange because on my experian report it says all zeros besides that account because i pay in full. But somewhere i read that AU accounts dont count for this.  And you guys have told me consistently to leave around a ten dollar balance. Well somehow, my amazon store card reported a4 dollar balance and my account went from 721 fico to 735 overnight!  So its true, authroized user accounts dont factor into the equation of utilization, so why do they even put that on my experian report that i have an 11 percent balance from my Au account?  Maybe its just a metric to help you do your own financial statistics.

also, very important question.   Why does transunion report a different score, 680.  Do card companies like capital one and such use fico 8 scoring?  Or a mix of fico 8 and vantage 3.0?

---

There is personal revolving all-zero penalty and AU revolving all-zero penalty, they are distinct, separate penalties which means the ideal profile maintains AZEO for personal accounts and AZEO for all AU accounts as well. 

Not a fan of AU accounts personally. They can artifically raise your credit score and change other credit metrics that will go entirely unconsidered by lenders and it just gives a false sense of where your credit is actually at. 

so your credit report might have a higher score and older 'age of accounts' but the vast majority of lenders are just going to completely discount that information entirely.

it's fine if you're actually using the card in daily life, but if it's just to 'improve credit' I honestly wouldn't bother in most situations. 

as said above, practically nobody uses vantage 3.0 scoring in their underwriting. What score a lender does use is based on their own underwriting. 

Cap1 for instance uses FICO 5, 4, 2 (mortgage credit scores) Discover uses Experian FICO 8 for CC's (typically).

old thread about this question

[Thomas_Thumb]

The vast majority of CC issuers look at a Fico score for credit card decisioning. However, they often provide a different free credit score. That certainly can account for an outlier credit score relative to the others.

VS3 includes AU cards in utilization as do the older Fico 04 models (EQ score 5, TU score 4 and EX score 3). The newer Fico 8, 9 and 10 models do not.