myFICO,
I really do not like the lengthy posts so my apologies in advance but this will be one for sure. Pardon my lack of brevity but my hope is for this to be a valuable read/resource for the community....FWIW!!!
Background:
It's been several years since my last credit report 'deep cleaning' and let's just say I'm paying for my lack of timely and frequent attention to it in more ways than I can count. I spent a weekend doing internet research and going over every myFICO and all CB alerts. It's true when they say the 'devil is in the details'.
Here are some of my key findings:
- The content of the 'comments or narrative' section of the report CAN impact your score. I did a post a few weeks ago about my TU report and the comments on one tradeline changed from 'acct in dispute' to 'charge-off acct' and my score plummetted -60 points and @-12 to -24 points on Equifax. I immediately ask them to put it back 'under dispute' and voila I gained the points back. Well come to find there are a number of narrative that are considered to be derogatory by credit scoring models and can correlate with lower scores such.
- Examples are:
--Foreclosures, Reposession, Charge Off, Bankruptcy, Settled, Assigned to collections, Account current past due (30,60,90....). It's been difficult to find the exact codes used by each of the CBs as they are different so I can 'speak their language' when I try to get these removed. Needless to say this could be a major GAME CHANGER (IMO) in terms of credit education, cleaner reports
- Examples are:
- Disputes often come back verified as because the CBs only use a few of the dispute codes available to them. When they enter the dispute code into the eOSCAR system (system used by all credit bureaus to enter dispute to be sent electronically to the credit grantors) and it may not reflect the true nature of your dispute. A majority of time the documentation you send also does not get sent thru to the creditor. NOTE: I can personally attest to this as I just sent several disputes with multiple forms of documentation proving I wasn't late and they all came back verfied. Found out later the CBs just disputed it as 'never late' w/o sending over the docs. All of this is done systematically with no human doing any manual reviews. Similar to the narrative codes I referenced above, there are about 100 dispute codes so now I will be smarter when submitting my disputes in the future and will tell them the dispute code that best fit my request.
- Lastly, If the dispute outcome isn't favorable you can "exercise your rights under FCRA 611(a)(6)(B(iii) which provides that a consumer may request “a description of the procedure used to determine the accuracy and completeness of the information"
Again, thanks for your understanding with the length. Somewhat my way of giving back to a community that has been so great.
[Update: 12/12/19. Equifax removed a comment/narrative code of 'Account closed by credit grantor' and my score went up 10 points. Before you ask, NO nothing else change on my report that I can see and this all happened in a span of 24 hours]
Happy Weekend!
@Birdman7,
Perhaps I was unclear with my post as it was not intended to convey that submitting a 'fraudulent' dispute. Having potentially 'derogatory comments' in the narrative section of the report is completely different from an account being in dispute. IMO the only thing they have in common is that they both reside in the same box on the credit report.
1. Yes, while an account in dispute is, for all intents and purposes, taken out of the scoring which typically impacts the score 3-5 pts. On the other hand you can have derogatory comments placed by the credit grantor which in alot of cases is just repeating the payment status. Just earlier this week, someone posted in the 'Credit Building' section how the removal of FORECLOSURE wording from his narrative section resulted in +105 point increase. And before you ask, he said nothing else changed. As mentioned, I also noticed a 64 point socre impact when collection account was added on mine. While I no scoring expect, I have yet to see an account just 'in dispute' garner this type of score change.
2. IMHO it's a game changer in that it is another major data point in our credit education and it's another way to potentially raise scores unexpectedly while getting a cleaner report. You don't have to dispute those comments but rather contact the bureaus and simply ask for them to be removed and they will contact the credit grantor as it's at their discretion whether or not those comments are placed on the file.
3. The narrative codes I've compiled thus far are only for EQ and two agents have now confirmed the codes but not the fact they are considered derogatory. They are:
- Charge off account-067
- Account closed by credit grantor-065
- Past Due (30,60, 90, etc)-264
- Collection Account-057
- Foreclosure (TBD)
- Repossession (TBD)
- Dispute-166 (not a derogatory code)
Regarding the table, not trying to tease but the formatting got completely screwed up when editing and I got deleted. I'll update post when I can re-construct.
Lastly, I just put in a request to have a narrative code deleted so will report back once I get a response; favorable I hope.
@BrutalBodyShots,
In your example do you know for a fact that it the dispute that brought the score down 100 pots or could it have been the fact that ‘collection account’ also showed up in the comments section?
It’s possible, if that were the case, that disputing the account brought the 100 pts back because the new narrative code for dispute was the main one at that time and collection was in the background and not impacting score.
As has been stated 1 million times on this site, all files are different and we still my know what people choose to tell us about their files then we made assumptions off of that info.
Nonetheless, this is what MY research as led me to believe and I continue to look for other data points to substantiate that belief and you can either take it or leave it...I don’t really care one way or the other.
In your example do you know for a fact that it the dispute that brought the score down 100 pots or could it have been the fact that ‘collection account’ also showed up in the comments section?
It’s possible, if that were the case, that disputing the account brought the 100 pts back because the new narrative code for dispute was the main one at that time and collection was in the background and not impacting score.
As has been stated 1 million times on this site, all files are different and we still my know what people choose to tell us about their files then we made assumptions off of that info.
Nonetheless, this is what MY research as led me to believe and I continue to look for other data points to substantiate that belief and you can either take it or leave it...I don’t really care one way or the other.
@Anonymous wrote:I've always been very skeptical of "comments" being a factor that can impact Fico scoring. I think more often than not it comes down to the account being in dispute which is impacting score, not the actual comments. Over the years on this forum it was from what I read more or less believed that comments were not a factor in Fico scoring... the same way an address or high balance are fields that aren't score-impacting. Recently however more people have been reporting that comment changes have impacted their scores and in a few of the examples it sounded like accounts in dispute were not a variable... so I'm not sure we've got a conclusive answer at this point.
I'd like to hear other opinions on the subject.
I've recently seen first hand that a comment can have an impact on a FICO score. I recently posted (Equifax: 105 point gain - Foreclosure remark removed) that my score jumped due to the "Foreclosure" comment being removed. My CK alert specifically stated that it was the remark being removed.
This is a snapshot of the account from March, and as you can see, there are no other derogatory indicators other than the word foreclosure in the comment section.
@BallBounces wrote:Let me see if I can phrase this question in an understandable way:
Is it possible that the "comments" field which is visible on your consumer report, is not what effected the score change, but rather a (hidden) hard data field which was removed from foreclosre and then reflected in the comments field?
I'm doubting it at this point. I would think that a "hard data field" would cause the same effect on EQ as it did on EX. Someone at BofA marked Sep2012 on EX as a foreclosure while just placing a comment on EQ.
The result was that the EX account entry was deemed derogatory and dropped off of my report at 7 years. The EQ entry remained but the 120-day lates and foreclosure fell off sequentiallly thus leaving a positive account.
It seems to me that a comment is just a comment, but is scanned by FICO for keywords like FC, BK, chargeoff, etc.