Questing about scoring and alerts from MyFico

[Bogey1975]

I've paid down several credit cards that were over 60% UT to 0 in the past week I only have two cards left with Balances both one is 24% UT and the other is at 44% (working on those now). Some alerts are coming though on myFICO noting the balance changes, however the scores are staying the same. Should I expect a change in score everytime a positive or negative alert comes in rather it be going up or down? Also, on the 20th, I got an alert saying my Balance increased by $19 and my score went up by 9 points. How is that possible if my balance went up?

Thanks

[Anonymous]

Alerts are not for score changes, they are for credit report changes.  Changes to your credit report may or may not be tied to a score change provided at the same time.  Your score can also change for non-alertable events, such as an account aging.  For example, today is Dec 1 so all of your accounts are now 1 month older.  If you crossed an aging threshold this may have caused your score to increase, but since it's not alertable you wouldn't know and you wouldn't be provided with a new score.  Let's say that aging was "worth" 8 points that you didn't know about...

Tomorrow you may have a credit card that currently has a $20 balance reported report again with a $30 balance.  That increase in $10 would not cause a score change, but you'd receive an alert that your balance increased.  With that alert, you'd be provided with a new score.  You'd see that your score went up 8 points and would wrongly assume that your balance increase increased your score, when in fact it was the non-alertable event of your file aging that increased it. 

Hopefully that makes sense.

So no, you should not expect a score change for every alertable event you see.  And, just remember that score changes provided may have absolutely nothing to do with the alert reason.