Buckle up because this will be long winded. I will try to be as concise as I can. In response to another recent thread I discovered about a penalty for all zero similar to letting all revolvers report a 0 balance, but a separate category for your AU cards, I decided to go back and research my scores when I disputed an AU account and what happened. Back when this happened I was not as aware of my scoring as I am now, and was not actively tracking and understanding everything so I am trying to recall this the best I can, but do not remember every detail.
The "why": I was previously married, and an AU on just 1 of my wife's cards, a Cap1 platinum with a $1,400 CL. When we divorced, she removed me as an AU from that card through Cap1. (This was back in 2018.) The card stopped reporting to EQ and TU, but apparently continued reporting to EX. Now, I was under the impression that the card was sitting there showing as a previous account, but not actively reporting, until low and behold a balance popped up one day. I realized that either the card had changed in the way it was actually reporting to EX, or she had just not used it until then and this was the first time I had noticed. The former of those two options sounds strange, but that is how the card is currently showing on my other two reports (more on that later.) When I noticed that all of a sudden there was a Cap1 account reporting a $547 balance on my EX I freaked out and filed a dispute within the next couple of days. I went back and reviewed the timeline on my archived EX reports and have kind of a high level overview of what it looked like.
PHOTO 1: 12/4/19. Cap1 AU card reporting 0, AMEX $311/$1,000, my own Cap1 $179/$5000. Score was 690.
PHOTO 2: 12/17/19. Cap1 AU card reporting $547/$1,400, AMEX $311/$1,000. Would have been AZEO with AU reporting bal. Score: 699.
PHOTO 3: 12/24/19. After dispute is finished and AU account removed from EX. AZEO with AMEX $311/$1,000. The Cap1 account was from '07 so it was giving me a great AAoA boost! Score: 688.
It looks to me like my score was affected by both an AAoA boost, and a usage/non usage score segment. I would assume that if the AU card had reported below 29% instead of over 39% like it did, my score may have been even higher. When it reported the balance, I received the boost. When it went away completely, I lost it again plus another 2 points which I assume would be an AAoA penalty? Now this didn't change my AAoA, or AoOA very much. My AAoA went from 6 yr, 10 mo to 6 yr, 3 mo. My AoOA went from 12 yr, 5 mo to 12 yr, 2 mo. This is all very fascinating stuff!
EDIT TO ADD: I would have chalked this up to an AZEO boost, but my EX 8 scores do not seem to be at all affected by this as proven by multiple tests.
NOW, back to what happened to this account with the other 2 bureaus. When I disputed this account with EX, it disappeared just as it should have. It did, however, appear on EQ and TU! (What the FICO, Cap1?!?) So now this account looks very different from my other accounts on those bureaus however. It shows up as an account with a "terminated" responsibility and only shows 24 months of payment history, ending on January of this year. The account is still open and active to my knowledge, just not reporting except for that small period of time. I cannot see the balance or any other details of the account any longer. What is very odd is how it appears on my reports. On TU it appears as an open TL and the CL displays as a part of my total CL when I look at my reports. On EQ it appears as a closed account, but the CL of this cards appears as a part of my total TL on annualcreditreport, but not on Credit Karma.
Photo 1 and 2 are what the account looks like on TU both on annualcreditreport, and CK.
Those 3 are what it look like on EQ.
A question I have is, am I receiving this mysterious all zero penalty for AU cards on two of my credit reports? I guess the only real way to find out would be filing a dispute, but the other thing is that I don't want to lose an account with such an old age. What are your thoughts on the whole situation? If you stuck through this until the end, I hope I made sense. Thanks for your insight and patience!
@Anonymous I'll just tag you in this one so I don't muddle up that other thread anymore.
I couldn't absorb the content of the OP, but I can confirm my own experience supporting the existence of this bizarre AU all zero penalty in FICO 8.
I have an authorized user on an account that usually reports a zero balance
The AU has a thin clean profile, and usually has one of AU's own 2 cards reporting a balance
This month on my usually zero card the annual fee posted causing a balance to report
AU's score jumped 19 points in EX FICO 8, suggesting that AU is normally being penalized that amount for my zero balance
PS I reported a nominal balance on the card several months ago just to test for this, and same thing happened then
@SouthJamaica wrote:I couldn't absorb the content of the OP
Haha! I know, that post was just way too much. I couldn't absorb it when I went back and re-read it either, SJ. I'm sorry! Let me take just 1 piece of the puzzle and post that and see what you guys think. Two screenshots, the first is a 3B pull from 8/15 using Experian's website; the second is a screenshot of the overview of accounts from my EQ report taken directly from annualcreditreport on 8/23. Let's just focus on EQ to make this easier to talk about. On the 3B pull it shows 7 open accounts with a TCL of $38,500. On the full report it shows 8 open accounts with a TCL of $39,900. I am inclined to believe that even though this account is not reporting any longer, and shows remarks such as "account relationship terminated," or "undesignated," that it may still be counting as an AU account. I guess the main thing I am trying to process here is if my score will go up or down if I have this account removed.
@Ficoproblems247 wrote:
@SouthJamaica wrote:I couldn't absorb the content of the OP
Haha! I know, that post was just way too much. I couldn't absorb it when I went back and re-read it either, SJ. I'm sorry! Let me take just 1 piece of the puzzle and post that and see what you guys think. Two screenshots, the first is a 3B pull from 8/15 using Experian's website; the second is a screenshot of the overview of accounts from my EQ report taken directly from annualcreditreport on 8/23. Let's just focus on EQ to make this easier to talk about. On the 3B pull it shows 7 open accounts with a TCL of $38,500. On the full report it shows 8 open accounts with a TCL of $39,900. I am inclined to believe that even though this account is not reporting any longer, and shows remarks such as "account relationship terminated," or "undesignated," that it may still be counting as an AU account. I guess the main thing I am trying to process here is if my score will go up or down if I have this account removed.
@Ficoproblems247 you cannot trust what the front end tells you on a 3B report for percentages. that is not calculated by the algorithm nor for your credit limits, that is calculated and added up by MF not by the actual algorithm, I think.
discount everything but ACR, do the calculations yourself and yes those are some great links Cassie provided!