What the heck is going on?

[Madison]

I just got a score alert that my FICO score just dropped 18 points from 691 to 673. I had to purchase another credit report from EQ to see what happened. And guess what? NOTHING different from report in JAN except my utilization and balances on all my accounts went down. I made all payments on time. I tried talking with MyFico but they couldn't do anything. I am on hold right now with EQ and have been holding to talk with someone for 15 minutes now. This is the craziest thing I think I have ever heard of. What the heck is going on?

[MidnightVoice]

Quite honestly I just ignore minor ups and downs like that.  But I am now in the "long term improvement" phase.

[Madison]

18 point drop is not minor, especially when you are in process of getting a mortgage loan. A one or two point drop would be minor.

[llecs]

Did the Scorewatch alert give a reason?

Try this: put both reports side-by-side and look over each account. Look for things like balances, reporting dates, payment history, account totals to see if anything dropped/added, inquiry count, credit limits, etc.

[Junejer]

Madison, I agree that 18 points is not minor, especially when looking for a mortgage. But do what llecs said and break out the magnifying glass to see if something reported differently. Chances are, there is some minor difference that made this major change.

[haulingthescoreup]

Madison, can you copy/ paste your score alert here, all of it?

Also, when you look at screen two on your new report and the previous one, is anything different on the positives and negatives listings? Also, on the credit at a glance page, has anything changed there?

And definitely, as the others said, do a line-by-line comparison of the reports themselves. But I'm especially interested in any differences in the "editorial" comments that go along with the reports.

[Madison]

Talk about frustration. I talked with service dept. at MyFico and they tell me I need to talk directly with EQ...Wrong....I got nothing from them and was disconnected 4 times caused they couldn't give any reasons for credit scores being lowered. I had ordered another EQ report and nothing had changed except I made all my payments on time and paid more than minimum payments on all revolving cc and accounts.

 I then called FairIssac. The guy there was somewhat helpful. Here is what he told me and I was in shock at what he said. He told me that when you dispute anything with the CA that they take that account out of your records until it is resolved....In other words, I had disputed 3 accounts cause on my 1/19/08 EQ credit report I purchased, two of the accounts had balances which were paid to $0 on CC's and another CC didn't show the new CL increase. He said that when they took those 3 accounts out of my records when I disputed them my credit score jumped up and when they resovled them, my credit score went down cause one of them had 1 30 day late payment from 2005.....I am at a loss. According to him, when you dispute any accounts they don't include that account in your credit score until it gets resolved....I didn't know that!

[Junejer]

Yep, it's true. There were actually a couple of threads being tossed about yesterday on this very subject. That is unfortunate, but that's how it works. What happens is the report date becomes more current and thus will update to a more recent time period. Sorry for the loss.

[Anonymous]

I had my score drop 30 points for apparently no reason at all either. I have pulled all kinds of reports, and the only changes were balances/util going down. All I can figure is new bucket?

[Madison]

What is a new bucket?