What was your actual balance on the statement, and the credit limit on the card? Plain high utilization is detrimental to FICO scores.
As to the Reason Codes you get with scores, unless your score is 850 perfect, they have to feed you 3 or 4 reason codes per regulations. If you don't have any lates or similar major derogs, then they start hunting around for anything to put up there. Many folks with what we would consider low balances get the "revolving utilization too high" reason. Now, if utilization is 90%, that's a bit high. But the cardholder has to take the reason codes only as a starting point, not a clear statement of what should be done to improve scores.
If you floating on the edge of your credit line. Hopefully not. Quit using the card and pay it down. Over 89% reporting is considered maxed out and you get a score ding. Main reason is your paying interest and thats money youll never see again. All cash back is really gone due to losing your profit on interest.
@Anonymous wrote:I have a discover card and it is reported once monthly. I was initially told by a discover agent that exceeding my credit limit would NOT be detrimental to my FICO score if the limit was not exceeded on the cycle date (when it's reported). However, my credit score dropped last month even though I was not exceeded on the report date, though I did temporarily exceed it.
My report said "revolving utilization on revolving credit too high". Does that mean temporarily exceeding my limit -- even if the credit card numbers will be reported after I pay it off -- will hurt my FICO score?
You haven't told us how much you paid it down after exceeding your limit. In other words, what was its balance on the date it reported? If your balance put you at or near your credit limit, THAT is what hurt your score, not temporarily exceeding your limit, per se.
Now, if you tell us you paid down the balance to 10% or 20% of its limit....well, that's a whole other story!!
Please give us some actual numbers: your CL, how far over you went, how much you paid down and the figure that got reported to the CBs.
