Silly System

[Anonymous]

I signed up for FICO simply to be aware of possible mistakes, such as some of the ones I've experienced in the past.  For example, I was once turned down for an American Express card because they thought I was deceased.  However, what I'm getting from this service is a bunch of super silly messages everytime a balance on one of my credit cards goes up.  Apparently they never take note of the fact that I don't carry balances and yes, the balances on some of my cards will flucuate.  I especially love it when a card balance goes from $19 to $100 and FICO considers that to be a major increase.  My American Express monthly balance generally flucutates between $1,500 and as much as $4,000, but apparently that pattern has never been noted by the FICO folks or the fact that it is always paid in full--on time.

[pizzadude]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I signed up for FICO simply to be aware of possible mistakes, such as some of the ones I've experienced in the past.  For example, I was once turned down for an American Express card because they thought I was deceased.  However, what I'm getting from this service is a bunch of super silly messages everytime a balance on one of my credit cards goes up.  Apparently they never take note of the fact that I don't carry balances and yes, the balances on some of my cards will flucuate.  I especially love it when a card balance goes from $19 to $100 and FICO considers that to be a major increase.  My American Express monthly balance generally flucutates between $1,500 and as much as $4,000, but apparently that pattern has never been noted by the FICO folks or the fact that it is always paid in full--on time.

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A key component of your FICO score is your revolving credit utilization.   This is your balance compared to your limit at the point in time that your statement is cut. 

FICO doesn't keep track of balances over time, only your reported utilization, which as you noted , may fluctuate significantly from month to month.

If you do not make payments on time it will certainly be noticed by the FICO scoring algorithim, and your score will drop.    You don't get credit for on time payments.  

[Gunnar419]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I signed up for FICO simply to be aware of possible mistakes, such as some of the ones I've experienced in the past.  For example, I was once turned down for an American Express card because they thought I was deceased.  However, what I'm getting from this service is a bunch of super silly messages everytime a balance on one of my credit cards goes up.  Apparently they never take note of the fact that I don't carry balances and yes, the balances on some of my cards will flucuate.  I especially love it when a card balance goes from $19 to $100 and FICO considers that to be a major increase.  My American Express monthly balance generally flucutates between $1,500 and as much as $4,000, but apparently that pattern has never been noted by the FICO folks or the fact that it is always paid in full--on time.

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You know that you can control what kind of percentage increase or dollar increase will trigger an alert. Just check your settings.

I agree with pizzadude, you don't get alerts for always paying on time because there's nothing to alert about. On-time payment is just assumed.

IF you have anything weird or dramatic happen in your credit life, that will probably be reported, too, but be glad you're getting only "silly" alerts if nothing major is going on and change your SW settings if you want fewer balance change alerts.

[axxy]

You can always reduce the number of alerts by changing the settings.  I doubt there are any silly messages you can't turn off.  Most people's complaints are the opposite.  They don't get frequent enough messages of changes that are important to them.  But you can usually fix those too with the settings.  But if you get a message saying you died yesterday, you might want to save it, just in case you need it for your life insurance claim.