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

[Anonymous]

I'm one of those that is able to go from 1 revolver with balance to all with a balance and it doesn't impact my EX scores even one point.  Here's the result of my test for all 3B.  The only time I saw a score drop on EX was when going to AZ on revolvers, which is of course expected.

[NRB525]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Back in August I only had a local cu cc. I app'ed and got 5 more cards in a 3 week span. I have been waiting for all of them to report and get my dates so I could try AZEO to see how it affects my score. Now in the process of doing so, my original cc hasn't reported since August 31 and is showing a balance of $362/$1000. They told me it was an issue with them upgrading their computer system and to dispute. So I did.

Prior to the dispute my cu cc was 36% util and overall util was 9.55%. I was also at that time AZE2. So once the dispute came back I went to AZEO, total util 8.2% and individual util 22%. Based on everything I read I could expect as low as 2-3 points for AZEO or as high as maybe 10. I could also expect 5-10 points for crossing over each util threshold. At the low end of things I was looking at 12 points for all 3 factors and possibly as high as 25. 

Well the dispute came back and everything fell into place as it should. Yet I only gained 3 points! 3. Now I had never planned on AZEO long term. I just wanted to see what I could roughly expect moving forward if I ever needed to pick up some last minute points. And crossing total util and individual util didn't seem to matter for anything. I figure there really is no purpose in paying off my cc's and keeping util low at this point. 

Earlier when I first started tracking I had dropped 27 points when my cu cc went from $150 to $362. I didn't really understand the thresholds at that time and once I did I chalked up the point drop of 27 points to crossing over total and indiv utils since that was my only card reporting at that time it took both to 36%. But now I am thinking there may have been something else going on that I wasn't aware of since I had just started tracking.

Cmon 3 lousy points?

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OP I think it was commented in here, there is a LOT going on in your file. AZEO is just getting pummelled and it won't even be noticeable for quite a while.

Can you list out all your credit cards, limit of the card, latest balance on the statement, and most importantly, when you applied for the card. It is quite likely you have a lot of new accounts with recent INQ.

I am also a bit fuzzy on the status of your original one CU CC. If that was your only card, do I understand you disputed the balance? And was this dispute logged, accepted by the credit bureaus prior to the other credit cards reporting any balance? If so, I would think a possible reason for the score drop is, the dispute served to paper over your one credit card, it basically removed any credit cards from reporting, so you ended up with zero Revolving Credit Cards "reporting" any balance because the dispute papered over it, removed it.

The other factor that is going to come in is lowered AAoA with all the new accounts, once those start to report. Your Age of Youngest account obviously will drop below 1 year. What is Age of Oldest account?

For the car / installment loans, are any of those remaining with any balance? If so what is the utilization on those installment loans? If those are zero, no active installment loans, it is likely you aren't getting a credit mix benefit.

So the above comments are somewhat speculative, guessing what is going on. If you can clarify those points, it will correct me, or open other possibilities.

But I still think AZEO is not really something you will see any effect from for a while, until all these other factors stop stepping on it.

[Late2theGame]

My experience

My oldest open revolving account is 3 months.

1st reporting = AZEO <1%
2nd reporting = All Zero (Cap1 adjusted my $1 balance to $0)
3rd reporting = AZEO <5%

I gained 10 pts from EQ, and 17 points from EX.

[Anonymous]

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@NRB525 wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

Back in August I only had a local cu cc. I app'ed and got 5 more cards in a 3 week span. I have been waiting for all of them to report and get my dates so I could try AZEO to see how it affects my score. Now in the process of doing so, my original cc hasn't reported since August 31 and is showing a balance of $362/$1000. They told me it was an issue with them upgrading their computer system and to dispute. So I did.

Prior to the dispute my cu cc was 36% util and overall util was 9.55%. I was also at that time AZE2. So once the dispute came back I went to AZEO, total util 8.2% and individual util 22%. Based on everything I read I could expect as low as 2-3 points for AZEO or as high as maybe 10. I could also expect 5-10 points for crossing over each util threshold. At the low end of things I was looking at 12 points for all 3 factors and possibly as high as 25. 

Well the dispute came back and everything fell into place as it should. Yet I only gained 3 points! 3. Now I had never planned on AZEO long term. I just wanted to see what I could roughly expect moving forward if I ever needed to pick up some last minute points. And crossing total util and individual util didn't seem to matter for anything. I figure there really is no purpose in paying off my cc's and keeping util low at this point. 

Earlier when I first started tracking I had dropped 27 points when my cu cc went from $150 to $362. I didn't really understand the thresholds at that time and once I did I chalked up the point drop of 27 points to crossing over total and indiv utils since that was my only card reporting at that time it took both to 36%. But now I am thinking there may have been something else going on that I wasn't aware of since I had just started tracking.

Cmon 3 lousy points?

---

OP I think it was commented in here, there is a LOT going on in your file. AZEO is just getting pummelled and it won't even be noticeable for quite a while.

Can you list out all your credit cards, limit of the card, latest balance on the statement, and most importantly, when you applied for the card. It is quite likely you have a lot of new accounts with recent INQ.

I am also a bit fuzzy on the status of your original one CU CC. If that was your only card, do I understand you disputed the balance? And was this dispute logged, accepted by the credit bureaus prior to the other credit cards reporting any balance? If so, I would think a possible reason for the score drop is, the dispute served to paper over your one credit card, it basically removed any credit cards from reporting, so you ended up with zero Revolving Credit Cards "reporting" any balance because the dispute papered over it, removed it.

The other factor that is going to come in is lowered AAoA with all the new accounts, once those start to report. Your Age of Youngest account obviously will drop below 1 year. What is Age of Oldest account?

For the car / installment loans, are any of those remaining with any balance? If so what is the utilization on those installment loans? If those are zero, no active installment loans, it is likely you aren't getting a credit mix benefit.

So the above comments are somewhat speculative, guessing what is going on. If you can clarify those points, it will correct me, or open other possibilities.

But I still think AZEO is not really something you will see any effect from for a while, until all these other factors stop stepping on it.

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Well all of my accounts had reported 2 or 3 months already when I disputed my original cu cc. So I had already taken the hit from the AAoA dropping and then picked back up when my 2nd and 3rd cards hit the 3 month mark on 11/1.

Four of my cards had reported $0.

NFCU was reporting 2200/10000

CU cc was reporting 360/1000

Total util was over 9% of 27k.

I have one car loan that was paid off 3 years ago. Adn another loan that has been open for almost a year and a half. The remaining percent is about 55%.

So I understand I have a lot going on recently, but everything has been settled for the last month and I have been checking daily. At the time of the dispute that was the only chamnge on my profile. 4 cards are within 4 days on each other and the other 2 are 3 days apart. It is pretty easy to track everything since it is a week span at the end of the month and a few days in the middle of the month. The rest of the month stays the same.

[Anonymous]

A summary of some of selected advice you have got thus far.  If you are interested in testing how the single scoring factor called "Number of accounts reporting a balance" works on your profile:

(1)  Give it maybe one more month after everything has settled down.

(2)  "Everything has settled" should include an anticipated time when no more extra confounding events are happening to your profile.  (No new accounts appearing, no new inquiries, no inquiries turning 365 days old, etc.  Those are just a few examples of many.)

(3)  "Everything has settled" should also include either having exactly one card reporting a positive a balance, or having many cards reporting a balance.  The balances should be small as well.

(4)  The test then is easy.  Either implement AZEO (if you had many cards reporting a balance) or make small charges on many cards and let them report.

A few additional things to remember:

(a)  FICO 8 has been shown to be far less sensitive to the factor "Number of accounts reporting a balance" than the old mortgage models or the BankCard Enhanced flavors.  So don't be surprised if the scoring difference is minor. 

(b) FICO 8 is implemented differently at each of the three bureaus; the actual scoring model is slightly different even though it is still labeled FICO 8.  Therefore your three FICO 8 scores may get different degrees of benefit.

(c)  When reporting your testing results to the forum. be sure to let us know how many accounts are showing a balance that are NOT cards (typically open loans).  These might easi;ly skew your results since the FICO negative reason statement does not indicate revolving accounts specifically, but rather simply "accounts."

[Anonymous]

Well today my last 3 accounts turned 3 months and my EX Fico 8 jumped 11 points. I am not sure if I should attribute that to the youngest accounts on my profile hitting 3 months or if now that all accounts are 3 months minimum that I started to see the benefits of AZEO as someone mentioned earlier.

I think everything has settled for about a month and a half. Three of them hit my reports almost immediately and by early October all cards were reporting and I have been making sure to have them paid off since each cards second report date. The only problem I had was my original cc(which I am now going to close after this as it has served it's purpose).

I should've tracked some of the other scores like you mentioned. I don't have access to the mortgage score. Only the Fico 2, auto 2, bankcard 2&3. I have the monthly TU and EQ but for testing the monthly doesn't help as much as the daily so I can see when a change happens. On the monthly I woldn't have known my score went up 11 points today on 12/1 due to aging. It might have been another reason. 

Now that I think I have a baseline to go off of with all cards being a minimum of 3 months and no other milestones coming up for 2 more months (when 2 of them turn 6 months) I can let a couple report a balance to see how my scores change. All of the scores I have access to that is.

Thank you all for your input in this thread. I thought I had a good testing model going but obviously I had left a lot out of the equation. I have a much better idea now.