Is everything I've read here wrong? Or is it YMMV?

[HeavenOhio]

Do what oldman says. One of the things that gets lost in the great AZEO debate is that it's a great reference point for testing.

[Bees18]

You opened 5 cards in a short time, you should be lucky you even got +3 pts. I doubt you would see any benefit from AZEO untill those accounts were 6 months old, or at least three.

[Ardecko]

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@Bees18 wrote:

You opened 5 cards in a short time, you should be lucky you even got +3 pts. I doubt you would see any benefit from AZEO untill those accounts were 6 months old, or at least three.

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This, so many times.

Your scores are currently depressed by all the new cards.

Collect any SUBs you can, but don't spend more than you can pay off.

Read more posts here.

Check in with us in February.

[HeavenOhio]

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@Bees18 wrote:

You opened 5 cards in a short time, you should be lucky you even got +3 pts. I doubt you would see any benefit from AZEO untill those accounts were 6 months old, or at least three.

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Sure he would. But you have to be comparing apples to apples, which now requires a new round of testing with a drastically changed report. The flaw in the OP's observations is that he didn't try AZEO until the new cards reported, i.e. there's no common baseline.

The benefit of AZEO would depend on how far from AZEO one might like to go. There'd likely be a big difference between AZEO and all cards at 50%. Depending on how limits are distributed, there may be no difference at all between AZEO and two cards at 28.9%.

[Anonymous]

Thank you all very much. I had too much going on this weekend and couldn't respond sooner.

I have been checking my EX daily. So I know the +3 was specifically from the AZEO as well as crossing over the thresholds mentioned.

I didn't know that it had to be AZEO, 8.9 total, and 8.9 indiv util. I had read numerous times that 28.9 was indiv so thank you for clearing that up. As far as all of my new accts I thought since they were all reporting that I had my baseline. I didn't realize that they had to be 3-6 months to potentially notice the AZEO benefits.

I will keep them down where they are and get the last card to 8% or less and see if anything happens when the last 3 hit 3 months on Dec 1. Hopefully I get a few more points from that. I had been 720-745 and now I can't get back over 700. I know it is just a matter of time but seeing where I was is frustrating. 4 months ago I would've given anything to be 650. Now I am frustrated I can't get to 720. Bigger problems out there I suppose.

[HeavenOhio]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I didn't know that it had to be AZEO, 8.9 total, and 8.9 indiv util. I had read numerous times that 28.9 was indiv so thank you for clearing that up. As far as all of my new accts I thought since they were all reporting that I had my baseline. I didn't realize that they had to be 3-6 months to potentially notice the AZEO benefits.

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The general wisdom is that staying under 8.9% overall and under 28.9% on any one card will give you your best score. But we've seen occasional exceptions where people have been dinged at lower amounts. AZEO simply puts your balance so low that thresholds are taken out of the equation. AZEO vs. 8.9/28.9 might be one of the things you'd like to test.

If all of your cards are reporting, you should be fine to test. I think some of us may have gotten the impression that they hadn't all reported yet.

As you test, keep the unexpected in mind. For instance, if your utilization and score both increase, something else has happened.

[Anonymous]

Also let us know how many accounts of any kind that have a positive balance.  That includes loans, car leases, closed accounts that still have a balance, etc. 

And bear in mind the other piece of advice I gave you.  The bottom line of your initial post is that you were expecting a substantial score boost in FICO 8 from having exactly one card with a positive balance (AZEO) compared with several accounts with a positive balance.  You should not expect this.  There have been many recent threads with careful testing that suggest that the FICO 8 Classic model gives much less weight to "number of accounts showing a balance" than do other FICO models (e.g. the old EQ mortgage score or the Bankcard Enhanced flavor of most models). 

[HeavenOhio]

What I find is that two cards with a positive balance dings me on Equifax. Three dings me on TransUnion. On Experian, three doesn't ding me. A few people here can allow every card to report a positive balance without a ding. That's one of those things you have to figure out.

[Anonymous]

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@HeavenOhio wrote:

What I find is that two cards with a positive balance dings me on Equifax. Three dings me on TransUnion. On Experian, three doesn't ding me. A few people here can allow every card to report a positive balance without a ding. That's one of those things you have to figure out.

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Guilty as charged, my EX does absolutely nothing no matter what I do, and minimum movement on TU and EQ.

AZEO - EX 829 TU 841 EQ 827

6/6 with balance - EX 829 TU 834 EQ 823

The weird thing is, all 3 reports are identical except TU has 2 scorable HPs (for deposit accounts) while EX and EQ have none, yet TU has the highest score.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Also let us know how many accounts of any kind that have a positive balance.  That includes loans, car leases, closed accounts that still have a balance, etc. 

And bear in mind the other piece of advice I gave you.  The bottom line of your initial post is that you were expecting a substantial score boost in FICO 8 from having exactly one card with a positive balance (AZEO) compared with several accounts with a positive balance.  You should not expect this.  There have been many recent threads with careful testing that suggest that the FICO 8 Classic model gives much less weight to "number of accounts showing a balance" than do other FICO models (e.g. the old EQ mortgage score or the Bankcard Enhanced flavor of most models). 

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So I had one cc report a balance and one auto loan report a balance. I have one other auto loan that's been paid off for over 2 years and then the 5 cc with zero balance. Prior to this app spree I had a very thin file with a 720 fico 8. Now I am trying to thicken and get back to the 720.

And yes I was only looking at the fico 8 scores. I get the EX daily scores. Maybe next month I will switch and get a different product to check all versions of my scores so I can better judge what effect it has.