Utilization on card went up, so did EX score

[Anonymous]

Can anyone explain? My utilization was 13%, then went to 69% and I got a 4 pt increase. I have paid it back down since, but that score change has me confused.

[SouthJamaica]

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@Anonymous wrote:
Can anyone explain? My utilization was 13%, then went to 69% and I got a 4 pt increase. I have paid it back down since, but that score change has me confused.

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I can't explain it, but I hope it works for me too Because I'm about to go up from 1% to about 10%

[Anonymous]

lol, good luck.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:
Can anyone explain? My utilization was 13%, then went to 69% and I got a 4 pt increase. I have paid it back down since, but that score change has me confused.

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I have an indirect explanation;  I just paid about 8 of my accounts to zero.  My score dropped about 15-18 points so far.  I read on the forum that FICO takes into consideration how much debt you manage on a monthly basis.  I found out that is 30% of your score!

[Thomas_Thumb]

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@Anonymous wrote:
Can anyone explain? My utilization was 13%, then went to 69% and I got a 4 pt increase. I have paid it back down since, but that score change has me confused.

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Not enough info here.

However, utilization going up on one card could be offset by having other cards now report a zero balance, particularly if your aggregate utilization stayed in the same "threshold range" For example if you had three cards reporting 20%, one a 4% and one at 0% (assume all have the same CL) but now four report 0% and one is at 64%, your score would typically go up - because you dropped from 4 of 5 cards showing a balance to only 1 of 5.

The negative impact of a single card reporting a high UT % may have a small effect at 50% but a substantial impact on score does not happen until UT hits a "max out threshold" somewhere around 80%.