Score jumped 44 points!

[OmarR]

So I had a Synchrony (Value City Furniture) line of credit for only $1,000.

I had bought some ottomans about 3 years ago, did the 12 months 0% financing, paid off in 6 months.

Since it has been sitting at a zero balance since, i closed it. But i was struggling with how it would affect my credit score.

It reported as "Loan paid off".

Increase of 44 points on my FICO 8 score.

Go figure.

[Anonymous]

I am curious to hear what Revelate and Thomas Thumb have to say about it.   This sounds like a Finance Company Account.  (Buying furniture at 0% for 12 months with the account being considered a 'loan.")

If so, does this mean that FICO 8 is only penalizing people for open FCAs, and if a person closes them the penalty vanishes?  My understanding was that FCAs continued to hurt you even after the account was closed.

Note that the account has been reporting a $0 balance for several months now, so the boost is not related to the balance being paid off.

Omar, can you think of anything else that might have been going on in the 30 days prior that this might owe to?  E.g. utilization coming down on credit cards, a derog falling off, a Day 30 late becoming 24 months old.... anything at all?

[OmarR]

I currently check my credit report & score religiously;

I have 2 (30 day) lates from closed accounts that are due to drop off April 2018, but other than that, absolutely no other movement on my credit. I was @ 738, now @ 782. I even pay off all my cc's (3 in my sig) weekly so they usually report a zero balance.

Here is another interesting data point:

About the same year (2013/2014), I also did 6 months 0% financing @ Discount Tires but paid off in 6 months. And the creditor is also Synchrony Bank. Same login website for both accounts. Obviously, that account also has been sitting as a zero balance for almost 4/5 years now.

A small part of me wants to close out the account to see what happens, but I know that getting new tires is eventually inevitable for me.

It's silly that I constantly check my  reports/scores weekly knowing very well that my next movement wont be until April 2018 AND that I get alerts to changes. But I was @ 580 in 2010 and I am a little anxious to hit 800.

[Anonymous]

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@OmarR wrote:

I even pay off all my cc's (3 in my sig) weekly so they usually report a zero balance.

 .

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You write that your credit cards usually all report a zero balance.  Is it possible that one of the cards showed a positive balance recently?

If so, that would account for part of your score boost.  Your pattern of having all your cards at zero causes you to take a scoring penalty.  It shouldn't be a 44 point penalty, but most people report a penalty in the 15-25 range.

I encourage you in the future to always let one card report a positive balance.

Do you use all three cards at least once every 120 days?

[OmarR]

Hmm, very interesting!

My monthly reporting:

VISA - My daily card - ~$150

MC   -                                ZERO

AMEX -                            ZERO

I do use my MC & AMEX every 30 days, but pay them off before reporting. They are small purchases, like gas & soda.

I will take your advice and start letting the balances report.

[Anonymous]

Only one card needs to report a positive balance to avoid the "all zero" penalty.

But I would consider letting each one report a balance at least every once in a great while.  There have been some cases reported of weird stuff happening with a score that were very hard to explain except by the fact that the person posting had a card reporting zero constantly for a long time.  The conjecture was that the person's card was rendered by FICO as inactive and treated (by the algorithm) as if it no longer existed.   Naturally that would be fixed as soon as it reported a balance.

I used to think this would be no problem because I had thought that all CC issuers were reporting payment data to the bureaus (as part of the move toward trended data) but quite a few don't do that (or so I am told).  If payment data are reported, then it would seem like that would be enough to keep the DOLA current (Data of Last Activity).

Anyway, this is all conjectural, but as far as I can see there's no reason NOT to let your cards report positive balances every now and then, so why not cover your bases and do it.

[OmarR]

You guys ended up being correct.

After looking at my reports, I had two baddies fall off my report (one 30 day & one 60 day) that (I thought) werent supposed to fall off until April 2018.

Just wanted to post for a proper DP.