ScoreWatch alert: 11 points drop from $7 increase in balance?

[SwiftTone]

I received a ScoreWatch alert saying that my FICO dropped from 711 to 700. The only difference in my report is that one of my accounts report a $7 balance, up from $0 last statement. Total available credit is $19,250.

My balance/limits are as followed: 1500/9500, 64/3500, 0/4000, 7/1250, 0/1000.

The only thing I can think of that caused a score change is that just the fact an extra account reported a balance. so instead of 2/5 accounts reporting a balance, now its 3/5 accounts.

Any ideas guys?

[llecs]

Did any of the pos/neg reasons change on the 2nd or 3rd page?

[SwiftTone]

---

@llecs wrote:

Did any of the pos/neg reasons change on the 2nd or 3rd page?

---

I didn't pull a report. All I read was the reason that it changed on the alert, and it said my balance increased by $7.

I don't want to use up my pulls yet.

If it did, what does it mean.

edit: are you talking about rebucketing?

[Quips]

Unless something else changed on your report - reporting a balance on more than 50% of you accounts will have an impact on your score. Same thing happened to be a couple months ago when a couple of my store cards reported a balance that i didn't expect. I had a 9 point decrease. Next month after i cleared the balances it went back up. 

[GregB]

If you only have a few accounts that report, then you are more likely to be correct when you assume that is the only thing that changed. If so then "too many accounts with balances" is the likely cause of the drop in score.

[Anonymous]

This doesn't seem like a real head scratcher to me.

BTW -- Are you sure about those utilizations for both the previous and current score updates. Remember, Scorewatch only sends alerts based upon certain percentage changes in utilization.