Mysterious Score Change

[Contable]

My score recently dropped from 27 points with no apparent reason.  There have been no inquiries, no new credit, no balance increases.  I have paid off two cards within the last month but kept the accounts open.  Does anyone have an idea why?

[Anonymous]

did you dispute anything?

[cobra19]

All things being equal and with no changes - sounds like you've been bucketed.

[Anonymous]

Hi Contable, welcome to the forum!

One possible reason for the inexplicable score drop could be a change in scoring catagories. We call them buckets here. It's when you "graduate" into a group of similar people with fewer/more baddies.

EG: any baddies might have aged you into a different group with the same like/kinds of baddies; a collection might have aged, overall utilization has moved you into a different group, etc, etc, etc. It's one of the more difficult concepts for me to grasp, but it exists.

Have you compared all 3 credit reports, by putting them side by side and going down the page, line item, by line item?

That is but one possible explanation.

[Anonymous]

Eeppppp! I take 4 paragraphs to say what cobra says in 5 words.

[RobertEG]

Just a kick in the bucket!

[llecs]

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GETNUMBERSUP wrote:

did you dispute anything?

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Good question!

[Contable]

I have not disputed anything.  I recently paid off a card that was active and had no late payments.  To my knowledge I have not been late on any other bills.

[Madison]

Simular thing happened to me last month. I don't understand this bucketing thing. To me, the bucketing deal is not ethical. It is just another roadblock put up by the Credit Reporting Agencies and the CC companies.

[MidnightVoice]

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Madison wrote:

Simular thing happened to me last month. I don't understand this bucketing thing. To me, the bucketing deal is not ethical. It is just another roadblock put up by the Credit Reporting Agencies and the CC companies.

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In the long run the buckets help people increase their score if they continue to keep the CR clean