arbitraryending wrote:
I'm 19-years-old, and suffering from lack of credit history (one revolving Chase card). I completely understand why my score is what it is (just 1 year history, 60% utilization). But I have a perfect payment history, and no blemishes on my report.
I recently activated a new CapOne card (1 month ago). Around the same time, I had a family member add me as an authorized user to two other revolving accounts (A citi and a Wachovia, giving me four) with $0 Balances and totaling $17,200 in available credit, with perfect payment history over 7 years. This SHOULD give me 7 years of credit history, with an average age of 4 years per account, and 7% utilization, potentially fixing my limited history and utilization to jump into the high 700's, despite not having any installments posting.
My problem is that since creating my score watch, I have not received one update or alert. In the last month, my current Chase balance has not changed, my CapOne has not been reported, and neither of my auth. user accounts have been posted. I'm beginning to become concerned... Does anyone have any insight as to why nothing has changed?
Hi, welcome to the forums!
You won't get an alert for a balance change, unless it's big enough to affect your score. For the new accounts, they'll need to report first, and that will follow whatever billing cycle each account is on. (It varies by individual.) New accounts can be really slow to report.
In the meantime, for a score alert about a score change (as opposed to new accounts and so forth), be sure that you have set your target score to your current score. This is sort of a don't think about it, just do it deal, but it's because an alert is triggered when score movement "crosses" the target. Moving away from the target, whether up or down, counts as crossing, so that's why you always want to have your most current known score as target. Even then, there might have been a brief overlap, but this catches most of them.
Many people (understandably) set their target for 20 points or something ahead of where they are now, resulting in no notices for score increases that don't reach the target, or for score drops of any magnitude.
Also, make sure that your e-mail addy and phone number (whichever you're using for alerts) are entered correctly.
* Credit is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master. * Who's the boss --you or your credit?
FICO's: EQ 781 - TU 793 - EX 779 (from PSECU) - Done credit hunting; having fun with credit gardening. - EQ 590 on 5/14/2007
