Score dropped 23 pts

[Anonymous]

This is very helpful. Thank you. The creditscorecard.com is done through Discover and I have a Discover card which gives me a FICO score every month so I think this should be the same. Discover uses Transunion and my score this morning was 665 as of 1/21. My American Express uses Experian and my score was 685 as of 2/3....so should I be concerned that losing this bad collection account will drop my score down 23 pts....my scores on credit karma were 660 before it fell yesterday. And CK doesn't show Experian. So not far off from the 665 from Discover. This is why I am so confused.

[Anonymous]

Your score from your Discover card account is a TU FICO 8 score.  The score you get from your Amex account is an EX FICO 8 score.  The score from creditscorecard.com is also an EX FICO 8 score, so your score from Amex and creditscorecard.com would be identical if generated at the same time.  Your scores from your Discover account and the other 2 sources are not the same scoring model, so they likely won't match.  If you haven't yet signed up for creditscorecard.com, I'd suggest doing so 14-15 days after the date of your Amex score.  This way between Amex and creditscorecard.com you'll be seeing an update to your EX FICO 8 score every 2 weeks, give or take a day or two.  This would be quite useful for you.

No, don't be concerned about the collection coming off.  A collection coming off would only raise a FICO score.  What it does to a VantageScore doesn't matter.  It could drop your VantageScores by 200 points and you should only point and laugh at it.  A collection dropping when viewed by a FICO model would only result in a score going up, or if there are many other major negative items perhaps your score would stay the same.  It would NOT drop. 

Again, ignore those CK scores.  Just because yours happen to be relatively close to your FICO scores doesn't matter.  There are people with VS scores 100 points higher than their FICO scores.  Others have VS scores 100 points lower than their FICO scores.  Don't try and draw a comparison between them, as they are 100% unrelated.  Your best course of action would be to completely ignore the VS scores from CK and only use CK for the weekly monitoring of your EQ and TU reports.

[Anonymous]

This was all so helpful. I appreciate it so much. I did go and check my score at creditscorecard.com and it was even higher so I think we are good. If my score is high on this site would the other 2 reports show approximately the same score if the items on each report is the same? 

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymouswrote:

Sorry, I didn't realize....Credit Karma, both report scores on this app was dropped. I didn't realize this wasn't close to being acurate. Since I got my credit cards, my score has risen from middle 500s to 660 until yesterday. Should I be using something else?

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Bingo. Knew it immediately. Is why I said what I did in an earlier post. When newbies say Transunion and Equifax score, I know immediately they aren’t talking about a FICO. Only credit karma has those two scores on one sight. Unfortunitely different score types aren’t explained well out in the world.

[Anonymous]

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@AnonymousThis was all so helpful. I appreciate it so much. I did go and check my score at creditscorecard.com and it was even higher so I think we are good. If my score is high on this site would the other 2 reports show approximately the same score if the items on each report is the same? 

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Only 3 ingredients go into a credit score:

1 - The scoring model used (FICO 8, VS 3.0, etc)

2 - The bureau data used (EX, TU, EQ)

3 - The time at which those first 2 ingredients were used

2 scores generated from different sources that have all 3 ingredients the same will be identical.  Any time you have different scores, 1 or more of the 3 ingredients above must be different.  I think what you're asking is whether or not 2 scores would be the same if different bureau data is used, but the data between bureuas matches.  The answer it maybe.  People with identical bureau data have reported identical scores, while others have reported a 20-30 point variances between bureaus. 

[Anonymous]

You mentioned that you have a couple newer cards.  Have you let balances report on them?  If so, how much vs. your limits?

[Anonymous]

Yes I've had them a couple of months to balances are being reported and my percentage is at 40%...I did not realize that it should be at 29-30% so I am going to get those down to that percentage.

[Anonymous]

You want to make sure they are below the 28.9% threshold. 

It's usually smartest to shoot for the 27%-28% range, as that gives you a little buffer in the event that a bit of interest gets added in, thus raising your balance a bit.