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So today I got a notification from ScoreWatch that I had two alerts with a score change.
Between the two of these changes to my credit report....and I've looked, there were no others.....my EQ score dropped 8 points!!!!
There is something wrong with the system if my score drops because I pay down a balance or a credit card gets use but doesn't change its balance. The system is rigged against the consumer. There's no way either of these events should make me a higher credit risk to anyone.
I am in the process of getting a HELOC. If this had happened before I applied and it dropped my score causing me to be in a different tier for the lender, this could cost me $1000's over the course of this loan.
What was the sequence of other notifications / changes to your credit account, for the last few weeks? When was the last "score update" where a number was added or subtracted from your ongoing score? What happened between that score change and this one?
I am of the opinion that the scores are "lumpy" and the currently displayed "trigger" is not always the real driver of the score change. Rather, the most recent trigger can be just a reason for a weekly-ish recalculation, so they aren't trying to present the score every day.
I agree with the original poster.
I paid off one card that had a 50.00 balance. It reports as 0.00 and now I lose a point? From 732 to 731?.
One point drop might not seem like a big deal to many here, but I am in the process of getting a Mortgage, and my Bank is using the score that dropped.(Experian) I don't need nonsense like this happening on my credit report now.
Why am I being penalized for being responsible with my debt?
No one wants to answer my question? What were the other changes to the credit profile during this time? From the last noted score change, which might be a week or more in the past.
Not all events in your credit file are displayed for each bureau, I regularly see minor stuff show up on one bureau, not a message on the others but the same info would be there added to all bureaus.
At the root, FICO isn't personal, it's just a really complex algorithm that tries to make sense of a lot of moving data, so noise is inevitable.If you have small or zero balances on most of your accounts, the algorithm is going to weigh tens of dollars a bit more than in my case where accounts have thousands open. It takes a few hundred dollars to move the needle for me, but that may be as much about my length of payment history acting as a ballast factor.
@fittiger wrote:There is something wrong with the system if my score drops because I pay down a balance or a credit card gets use but doesn't change its balance. The system is rigged against the consumer. There's no way either of these events should make me a higher credit risk to anyone.
...sigh ...of course the system is rigged against the consumer ...you are not FICO's customer, the banks are ...FICO's scoring algorithms are designed to protect the banks, not you ...the banks are not going to pay for systems that protect you against them ...why would they? ...if you were in their shoes, would you? ...no, of course not.
...FICO's scoring system is not designed to deliver individualized scores based on your unique circumstances, rationale, and intent ...how could they be? ...they are based on decades of massive data gathered on the credit behavior of hundreds of millions of people ...credit behavior that is often irrational, emotional, illogical, etc ...in other words, normal human behavior ...and their scoring system reflects what the data tells them about the credit behavior of large masses of people over long periods of time ...the data doesn't lie ...while your partial paying down of a CC reflects your intent to manage your credit well, the data says that such behavior, combined with countless other factors considered, is generally a negative indicator of future credit reliability ...whether you or I consider that accurate or not is immaterial ...the reliability of the FICO scoring system is vouchsafed by the simple fact that every major lender depends on it despite years of effort by the CRAs to develop and promote their own alternatives (FAKOs).
...thats not to say that there are not problems with the system or that applying mass statistical analysis to individuals does not result in injustices ...it does ...thats why FICO is constantly revising its system ...the new FICO 09 model specifically addresses some of the identified concerns ie: lighter weighting of older medical bills ...but the banks are slow to adopt newer models until they have a lot of results based evidence that they work better than the older ones for the banks ...thus the continued use of the long outdated FICO 04 model by the vast majority of mortgage lenders.
...and please don't attack me as a defender of the system ...I'm not ...but the fact is that while your individual credit actions would rationally be viewed as positive credit behavior by most myFico forum users, most consumer credit behavior is not rationally based and the scoring algorithms reflect their behavior, not yours ...think of it in terms of well educated nutritionists vs McDonald's customers ...anyone trying to accurately predict what most people are likely to eat next week are going to go with MickyD, not the nutritionists ...what they WILL eat vs what they SHOULD eat.
On the surface I would tend to agree with the above post, but my experience here on MYFICO makes me believe otherwise.
Case in point. As an update to my original post in this thread, I have just recieved my Equifax update.
Same credit card. Same balance. Same paid off amount. BUT, Equifax RAISES my score 8 points!
**bleep**?
I am waiting tentatively to see what Transunion will report.
The 3 Credit Bureaus compete with each other? Great. I have no problem with that. That is the American way.
The banks want whats best for themselves? Great. I have no problem with that.They are the one's potentionaly lending money to someone.
What I have a problem with is that there is no standardization between the Bureaus when it comes to score grading criteria.
I don't know what can be done, but standardization is needed. Different Indutries across the world have standardized, Bureaus need to also.
And, if you continue to not look into the overall picture of the details of your credit file, as each bureau sees it, or look at the longer term trend/stabilized level of your FICO score, the conspiracy theory can continue unsullied ![]()
You haven't answered whether there are differences in what each bureau sees in your file, or what changed since the last "score update" you got. Without that information... I'll stop there.
Have a great day!
@Anonymous wrote:
What I have a problem with is that there is no standardization between the Bureaus when it comes to score grading criteria.
...the CRAs have absolutely nothing to do with "score grading criteria" when it comes to FICO scores ...the CRAs provide the data, FICO provides the scoring algorithms, myFico provides the results ...when the data provided by the CRAs differs, the scoring algorithms will provide different results ...you want to limit the discussion to one single item on your reports that "should" score the same ...it simply doesn't work that way ...the CRAs not only contain widely varying data from each other but also report widely different "update" data to myFico ...for instance, one CRA doesn't report all new accounts, one CRA reports only total credit balances, not individual accounts, etc etc ad infinitum ...myFico doesn't get an entire credit report unless you buy it, only changes that the CRAs deem to report ...myFico then runs its scoring algorithms against the data it has from the CRAs ...one score goes up, another down, another null ...que sera, sera
...is it perfect? ...of course not, nor will it ever be ...but it does "work" and the competition constantly improves it ...god forbid we ever get a single bureacracy providing a standardized "666" score on every American ![]()
FICO score is:
35% Payment history
15& length of credit history
10% new credit
10% type of credit
30% amounts owed.
If everything is exactly the same from all 3 of my CRA( Eperian, Trans Uniom, and Equifax), then the scores MYFICO reports to me every month when I pay for my updates should be exactly the same.
They are not.
BECAUSE the CRA have different criteria. No standardization. There is no way there should be 20 or more point difference between all 3. No way. The info is the same on all 3