score fluctuations

[Anonymous]

I have been doing a renovation on my home and using my bank cash back credit cards for supplies. Now that work is done I have paid down my balances, for example...a card with a $5000 limit was at $4500 and I paid $3000 off on the balance. The strange thing is that after I did this my Equifax score went up 5 points while my Experian score went down 4, all based on the same card and activity. Is this normal? I thought paying down but not zeroing out balance would improve my FICO score.

[FlaDude]

This thread from today has good info on fluctuations.

Where are you getting your scores? Has the updated balance had time to report to both bureaus? Most cards report the amount when your statement is generated (a few do end of month), but actually getting to the CB can take a little longer.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the input. I'm assuming Experian did get the report because the score was on  my FICO dashboard and actually said the balance on my card went down $2157 and my score dropped 4 points. Yet at the same time the alerts I received from the other 2 bureaus were that my score had gone up 5 points with Equifax and 10 points with Transunion. That's why I thought it was strange. But I'll give it some time.

[Abby4]

I have the same problem, yesterday Equifax showed I paid down a credit card by $87, my score went down 5 points, today Equifax showed I paid down a credit card by $60 and my score went up 8 points  what gives?