@DaveSignal wrote:By "constantly", I mean 4 times in less than 1 month of subscribing to score watch:
There have been no major changes to my credit report other than 2 inquiries and a new account, but those are the 3 alerts (675 score) listed where my score didn't change at all.
Is this normal?
Think of it like weight loss... if you have multiple factors (lots of cards updating, disputes in progress ect ect) -- dont' worry about the every day flux, just check again next month to see the end result of the months work..
If you want to check everyday, understand this will happen 
-scott
@Anonymous wrote:These items don't seem to be mentioned enough... The first "vibe" I got around these parts is that many folks just dispute everything, in hopes that something will stick. Thanks for validating my suspicion that disputing is really just a tool to deal with inaccurate info.
I already said that everything currently negative on my report is inaccurate. Acutally, there is something inaccurate about EVERYTHING on my report, just I am only disputing the negative items.
My credit repair journey started when the US Army told me, "you need to fix this immediately. Do these things now." I did what I was told and satisfied the government requirements.
I have since been working on my score for fun. I don't need good credit. I already have multiple high-limit prime credit cards. I already have a nice place to live. I already drive a great car. FICO has become like a game for me.... I like to play this game in my free time and try to accumulate as many points as I can.
My FICO has increased 100 points in the last 1 year. This is by continuing to follow the first advice given by my superiors. My superiors don't care, nor do they give me advice, for the purpose of following the forum guidelines at myFICO. They helped assist me raise my FICO score as fast as possible. It absolutely worked, and I have done nothing illegal.
EX:694 TU:744 EQ:777
@rckstrscott wrote:Think of it like weight loss... if you have multiple factors (lots of cards updating, disputes in progress ect ect) -- dont' worry about the every day flux, just check again next month to see the end result of the months work..
If you want to check everyday, understand this will happen
-scott
Yeah, I think its a combination of credit card updates and active disputes, but score watch sends me an alert every time, so I kind of have to look at it. I think next month will be a good month for me.
@llecs wrote:that same advice cannot be suggested or advocated on these forums, lest your advice gets zapped or edited.
I understand. Actually, I am stopping all of my disputes as of now. (Except for military star, which I just disputed because aafes hasn't updated the balance in 7 months and isn't updating as per my call-in or chat requests).
It got me so far, but disputing is no longer helping my credit journey. In fact, I don't know if it ever really did help me that much anyway. I am at a point where sometimes an account that doesn't appear to change in any significant way causes a score drop or increase. It makes no sense.
The biggest score increases I have ever received resulted from getting new credit cards and reducing utilization. Which is the main advice I give people.
I have figured it out. It is absolutely disputes that are causing the drastic drops in my score. On 5/19, the score drop is result of me opening a DV request for a paid Chase account that was charged off in 2009. I had since said that I was stopping all disputes, but there was one last one that bothered me: It was a Citifinancial paid charge-off from 2008 that was reporting new CO delinquencies for each month since that I filed a dispute against it, making it look as though my delinquencies were much more recent than the actual date that the account was closed. So I decided to do one last dispute, stating, "this history makes it seem as though my delinquencies are more recent than they actually are. the account was closed years ago." As soon as that account went into dispute status, my score dropped again. I have come to realize that merely putting an account into this dispute status can cause as much as a 20 point FICO drop.... evidence that this FICO algorithm is absolutely ridiculous, but this is what lenders use, so people with negative marks on their credit record must learn how to play with the system in order to get good deals from lenders. I expect my score to bump right back up to near where it was no later than 6/22, which is the estimated competion date of my disputes. I don't expect my disputes to change anything, except for maybe the last one I did asking to remove recent history on a closed account. But, simply the removal of dispute status will cause a score jump.
This is definately now the end of all DVs from me.
I don't understand why the score drops like it does, it just does. The accounts in dispute are not significantly helping my AAoA, my credit report has 30+ accounts on it. The history on the disputes items is bad and so it would make sense that a dispute would give me a brief increase in score. But this is not the case. FICO makes no sense, but I thought I would post what is happening for the benefit of other forum users.
DaveSignal wrote:
I am at a point where sometimes an account that doesn't appear to change in any significant way causes a score drop or increase. It makes no sense.
EDIT: removed because above post answers my questions
Regardless, congrats on the score improvement!
Thanks. I think it something in the Equifax FICO algorithm, because my Experian, Equifax, and Transunion PLUS score has stayed the same for the last week (at 692) and there really is no major change in the disputed accounts.... they still have the same status, equifax still shows the full payment history, everything is the same except for the comment which used to be "customer disputes this information" has changed to "customer disputes this information -- reinvestigation in progress"
The disputes caused the big score drops, but my score is still constantly changing even without the disputes. It will shoot up or down in a few days, maybe even tomorrow. And within 2 weeks I expect some sort of drastic change, hopefully positive. It is so sudden and unpredictable, though, that if I didn't already have a home, a car, and good credit cards, I would be applying like mad every time my score hit a peak just in the case that it will shoot back down again the next day.