Store Card Penalty

[ibebarrett]

So I opened a CareCredit card in January to finance a surgery and didn't realize that there was a penalty for store cards(this was my first ever store card). That being said, I had a series of events that leads me to believe that the penalty moreso applies to reporting a store card balance, so I'm curious what yall think of these DPs.

My CareCredit card was at $200 reported balance, I put $1700 on it but was able to put a $1800 payment before the statement cut(So should have reported 100). Despite this, my card reported 1900 which resulted in a 1 point drop across the board. I requested a mid cycle report due to the mishap which resulted in recovering that single point. A couple days later I paid the last $100, then Synchrony actually reported $0 balance midcycle(which surprised me) resulting in a 5 point gain across the board! The weird thing is my AAoA had updated earlier in the month, no new accounts reported, I didn't hit any new utilization thresholds nor is my report AZEO, so there were no other variables. Am I missing any possible variables or does this mean that there is in face just a penalty for reporting a balance on a store card?

*FICO 8*

[Anonymous]

There are other variables at play.  The first that comes to mind is your number of cards with a reported balance.  I'm assuming you had another (non-store) card with a non-zero reported balance, correct?  How many total accounts with balances did you have prior to the Care Credit account reporting $0?

It's possible if you went from (say) 4 of 8 accounts (50%) to 3 of 8 accounts (38%) with a reported balance that your scores would increase slightly due to crossing a number/percentage of accounts with a balance threshold.

[ibebarrett]

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@Anonymous wrote:

There are other variables at play.  The first that comes to mind is your number of cards with a reported balance.  I'm assuming you had another (non-store) card with a non-zero reported balance, correct?  How many total accounts with balances did you have prior to the Care Credit account reporting $0?

It's possible if you went from (say) 4 of 8 accounts (50%) to 3 of 8 accounts (38%) with a reported balance that your scores would increase slightly due to crossing a number/percentage of accounts with a balance threshold.

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I didn't think about that! I have 5 student loans reporting a balance but these are my revolver DPs:

Redstone FCU - 0/350

Cap1 Quicksilver - 163/1950(8.4%)

Costco Citi - 349/5500(6.3%)

Chase FU - 1332/2800(47.6%)

Care Credit - 0/9600

Agg Util - 9.1%

So 3/5 revolvers reporting balance, is it possible that the 8.9% threshold isn't exact?

Sidenote, I'm finally recovering from back to back unexpected expenses, so as of next month Cap1 should be reporting 0, Chase will be at an acceptable util, and hoping I can start having Citi report 0, I'd love to see how my numbers look at AZE Chase!

[Anonymous]

So it looks like you went from 4 of 5 revolvers (80%) to 3 of 5 revolvers (60%) with a balance.  As for those loans, are those 5 the only other accounts you have on your CR?  If you look at total accounts and that is indeed the case, you went from 9 of 10 accounts with a balance to 8 of 10 accounts with a balance.  I suppose it's possible that either drop could result in a score gain, although those threshold points aren't as concrete nor are they always consistent among profiles.

[Anonymous]

https://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Understanding-FICO-Scoring/TU-FICO-8-retail-card-differentiator/m-p...

https://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Understanding-FICO-Scoring/EX-FICO-08-retail-card-differentiator/m-...

[ibebarrett]

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@Anonymous wrote:

So it looks like you went from 4 of 5 revolvers (80%) to 3 of 5 revolvers (60%) with a balance.  As for those loans, are those 5 the only other accounts you have on your CR?  If you look at total accounts and that is indeed the case, you went from 9 of 10 accounts with a balance to 8 of 10 accounts with a balance.  I suppose it's possible that either drop could result in a score gain, although those threshold points aren't as concrete nor are they always consistent among profiles.

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My equifax has one other open account.....It's a rental agreement from like 2013 that just got reported in 2016 and is still being reported as open.......but that's just been a whole ordeal and a half......Other than that, no other open accounts. Thanks for the input, scoring models are a fascinating subject!