I have been trying for years to figure out FICO's scoring. Twenty five years ago my FICO score questions started when I lost a certain number of points when something got reported and then, when that same thing was un-reported only got back a fraction of those points. I was told then that it was just an abberration in the FICO scoring and something else happened in my credit file that caused the difference.
Well... it happened again. On July 22 my EFX reported that one of my account balanced went from $0 to $61 and I lost 12 points because of that. The very next day it went from $61 back to $0 and I got back only half of those points. Nothing else happened.
@Anonymous wrote:I have been trying for years to figure out FICO's scoring. Twenty five years ago my FICO score questions started when I lost a certain number of points when something got reported and then, when that same thing was un-reported only got back a fraction of those points. I was told then that it was just an abberration in the FICO scoring and something else happened in my credit file that caused the difference.
Well... it happened again. On July 22 my EFX reported that one of my account balanced went from $0 to $61 and I lost 12 points because of that. The very next day it went from $61 back to $0 and I got back only half of those points. Nothing else happened.
You don't know why you gained or lost the points. There is no necessary causal relationship between the score change and the substance of the alert.
MyFICO alerts don't provide reasons for a score change. There are certain events which trigger MyFICO alerts. If there happens to be any difference between your present score at that particular bureau and the previous score reported to you from that bureau, the score change is tacked on to the alert. There is not necessarily any connection at all between the score change and the alert substance.
MyFICO explains this in the "learn more" link contained in the alert:
Why did my score go up when I got an alert for something negative (or why did my score go down when I got an alert for something positive)?
The short answer: Your FICO(TM) Score may change because of other events not monitored by an alert.
Whenever we send you a credit alert, we also send an updated FICO Score. To ensure you get the most current score, we calculate it based on your entire credit report at that point in time - not just the new information on the alert. This means your new score may reflect other changes that are outside of the things we watch for (see everything we monitor).
Sometimes you may see your score increase when you think it should've decreased, and vice-versa, but you'll always have your most up-to-date and accurate score."
@SouthJamaica wrote:You don't know why you gained or lost the points. There is no necessary causal relationship between the score change and the substance of the alert.
MyFICO alerts don't provide reasons for a score change. There are certain events which trigger MyFICO alerts. If there happens to be any difference between your present score at that particular bureau and the previous score reported to you from that bureau, the score change is tacked on to the alert. There is not necessarily any connection at all between the score change and the alert substance.
I can concur, as the whole reason I logged in just now was because I received some alerts. Take a look:
As you can see, it shows a +8 increase to 667 for both a bankcard balance decline, and a mortgage balance decline. Since my score went up today (the lowest alert), and then two other events happened, the score change was tacked on to both.
So which one was it? No clear way to know. I did crunch some numbers, and my mortgage balance just dropped below 80% to 79%, so maybe that was the change? However for the bankcards, I just started AZEO so two cards went to zero. Could it be that? We don't know, we can only guess. (I suspect it was AZEO).
@SouthJamaica wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:I have been trying for years to figure out FICO's scoring. Twenty five years ago my FICO score questions started when I lost a certain number of points when something got reported and then, when that same thing was un-reported only got back a fraction of those points. I was told then that it was just an abberration in the FICO scoring and something else happened in my credit file that caused the difference.
Well... it happened again. On July 22 my EFX reported that one of my account balanced went from $0 to $61 and I lost 12 points because of that. The very next day it went from $61 back to $0 and I got back only half of those points. Nothing else happened.
You don't know why you gained or lost the points. There is no necessary causal relationship between the score change and the substance of the alert.
MyFICO alerts don't provide reasons for a score change. There are certain events which trigger MyFICO alerts. If there happens to be any difference between your present score at that particular bureau and the previous score reported to you from that bureau, the score change is tacked on to the alert. There is not necessarily any connection at all between the score change and the alert substance.
MyFICO explains this in the "learn more" link contained in the alert:
Why did my score go up when I got an alert for something negative (or why did my score go down when I got an alert for something positive)?
The short answer: Your FICO(TM) Score may change because of other events not monitored by an alert.
Whenever we send you a credit alert, we also send an updated FICO Score. To ensure you get the most current score, we calculate it based on your entire credit report at that point in time - not just the new information on the alert. This means your new score may reflect other changes that are outside of the things we watch for (see everything we monitor).
Sometimes you may see your score increase when you think it should've decreased, and vice-versa, but you'll always have your most up-to-date and accurate score."
I'm going to have to disagree with you on that - whether FICO watches something or not, the only thing that changed in those 24 hours is the balance on one card.
How does one get an account to report twice in 24 hours? The best I've ever done is calling for an off cycle update and that took at least 2-3 days.
@Anonymous wrote:I'm going to have to disagree with you on that - whether FICO watches something or not, the only thing that changed in those 24 hours is the balance on one card.
My account balances only report once a month. Is this a Synchrony account that's reporting every single day? Or maybe a Chase account that reports to $0?
