@macjosh wrote:
What it reported with not other changes is "The balance of one of your accounts has dropped $1789" then in red to the right a drop of 8 points. I have many accounts with a small balance on them.
From what you just said above, you've determined that it's impossible that your balance paydown caused your score drop. You said you have other [reported] balances, so FICO cannot hit you for a "no revolving credit use" penalty.
You're still not completely understanding the way the MF software and alert system works. You receive an alert when an alertable event (like a new reported balance) happens. You do not receive an alert for every change to your credit report, because there are plenty of events that are not alertable. They can still change your score though. You do not receive alerts for score changes, you receive alerts for credit report changes. At the time you receive an alert, you're provided with a new score at that moment. That new score many times has absolutely nothing to do with the alert you received. It does not matter that the red score change is to the right of the alert reason. This is MF's front-end software (poorly designed and misleading, IMO) telling you one thing and making you believe it is impacting something else.
Let me illustate how an alertable and non-alertable event could cause you be mislead as to the reason for a score change with this example:
On March 1, you had a scoreable inquiry from 365 days prior become unscoreable. This is not an alertable event. Your score on Feb 28 was 700. Since this March 1 event is unalertable, you don't know that your score is now (say) 705. 2 days later on March 3, one of your CCCs reports a new higher balance. You get an alert that the balance on one of your accounts increased $X. At the time you're provided with a new score, 705. Without knowing about the unalertable (inquiry) event, you'd wrongly believe here that your new higher balance actually increased your score 5 points, when that's in fact an impossibility.
