@Revelate wrote:
@bobebob wrote:
@Revelate wrote:
@bobebob wrote:
@Revelate wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
In my experience. Whenever I let a 2nd card post a balance even s minuscule amount I've Always seen a corresponding drop in score. This is 08 scoring.This happens with me as well according to the upgraded Scorewatch and presumably from the newer 3b monitoring though I haven't been tracking my scores much recently I can go back and do a historical analysis pretty easily.
Gained points going from 2->1 card (out of 9) reporting a balance, then lost the same amount when another reported.
I will say though that I did have a data point where I went from 8% to 44% utilization on that one card and the score didn't budge (still <10% of my aggregate) but I think the primary take away is that there's conventional wisdom which doesn't hold for every single individual. We know that people have variations in optimum balance amount based on their individual report, it's entirely possible that some data prefers 2 accounts with balance than one (I'm assuming you're not involving AU tradelines in this bobebob, AU discounting may be the source of the issue otherwise as a difference between FICO 8 and FICO 04)
The changes though are pretty small between 1 vs 2 cards reporting if you have call it 5+ credit cards regardless, and as such I think the base recommendation of only have 1 card reporting a balance is close enough to optimal that it's a legitimate recommendation... if someone wants to do better, then they can subscribe to a FICO monitoring service and figure out explicitly what the prettiest reported balances are for their individual report.
The main account I use is the account where I am an AU (Amex Costco). However, the tradeline showes up on my report and any amount showing on the statement comes up under my credit report as well.
It may be that when I called to request a CLI on the account and they took my information to make me partially responsible for the account that it became more of a joint account vs me being an AU.
What you may be stumbling over is the AU is being discounted from your scoring profile.
If you wish to test this, have the AU report zero, and the other card report, see if your score is the higher or lower of the two numbers. Then let some other card report see if that new score higher or lower. Unfortunately with an AU + 1 card reporting we can't state that 2 cards is better than 1 even for your profile under FICO 8, as if that AU is discounted, you are now at 0 tradelines with balance and we know conclusively that is a negative.
CLI request makes no difference to FICO's anti-AU abuse as I understand it: it may be on the credit report, just discounted from the algorithm... a very common occurrence under FICO 8 we've found.
If the 04 and 08 models treat AU accounts differently, then that may be what I'm seeing. I hadn't thought about that possible difference between the models. Maybe I'll get an AMEX in my own name and have them backdate it to the one I'm an AU on. Then all would go back to normal.
It makes it confusing because the AU account is still listed in the 08 reports I've pulled since the change along with the statement balances at the time.
When FICO 8 was originally released they didn't count AU's in the scoring algorithm at all because they were being abused; they backed off that after certain groups raised hell (rightfully) and developed some "anti-abuse" mechanism which discounts the tradeline for scoring purposes sort of like a tradeline under dispute.
Still listed on the report, not counted for one's FICO score.
I guess that is both good and bad news.
Bad in that it is a $20K line with a pristine history. Bummer that it doesn't count towards my score anymore (at least on myFICO).
Good in that I no longer have to worry about making mid-statement payments to keep the Util down. 
I'm kinda glad I just picked up a $19,500 REI Visa Signature line. It will offset the decrease in available credit (once it ages a bit).