You have too many credit accounts with balances - when I. don't have a balance at all!

[Manhattanlad]

So i paid off all of my credit cards about 3 months ago and I have available credit of $58,000 over 4 cards, 3 from capital one and 1 from Apple. My Fico Scores today are between 723 and 729 on FICO 8 and the reason it's not higher is because i have a bankruptcy from 9 1/2 years ago and a large student loan. No missed payments since the bankruptcy. HOWEVER I consistently get this notice "You have too many credit accounts with balances - when I. don't have a balance at all! - to keep my utilzation up I do show a balance of $200. per month but i pay it off before it's due. I asked Capital One for a balance increase and they cited this reason for denying it (plus strangely they have a credit score from Equifax that is 610, which was the score I had before i paid off my credit cards...is it possible credit cards don't update your score regularly and rely on their quarterly or annual pull ? 

[Anonymalous]

If it says, "too many credit accounts with balances" but you also didn't get "too many credit CARD accounts with balances", it's not referring to your credit cards. The student loan is a credit account, as well.

Most lenders you have a relationship with will do periodic soft pull account reviews. Capital One in particular makes their CLI decisions based on their most recent one, which is typically a month or two old. If you pull your credit reports from the 3 bureaus at annualcreditreport.com, you can see the dates of all the account reviews. Also remember that Cap1 use the old FICO mortgage scores, not the more modern scores like FICO 8 or 9. Those scores can be very different, and are more sensitive to things like account balances.

[MeredithLepore]

Is there a reason you want an increase in credit limit? I would just keep plugging away at your student loan and steadily watch your score increase over time without worrying about it too much right now.

[mgood]

@Manhattanlad wrote:

 . . . to keep my utilzation up I do show a balance of $200. per month but i pay it off before it's due.

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If you show a $200 balance when the statement cuts, but then you pay it off before it's due, that keeps you from having to pay interest on it. But the $200 balance is still what's reported for that account. If you do that with all, or most of your cards, then you have too many accounts with balances. Only way to avoid that is to pay it off before the statement date.

I'm not disagreeing with anything that's been said in comments above. Just throwing something out there that you might not have considered.

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@Manhattanlad wrote:

I asked Capital One. . . .

 . . . is it possible credit cards don't update your score regularly and rely on their quarterly or annual pull ? 

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Ah, Capital One. Yes, they can be difficult when it comes to increases.

And yes, they make periodic soft pulls of your credit report. When you ask for a credit limit increase, they don't actually pull a fresh report, they go by the most recent one they pulled, which could possibly be months old.