I monitor my husband's scores every day on Eliminate ID Theft. His Equifax score started at 549 and then increased to 558 after 2 collection accounts got deleted. It's been holding steady at 558 for about 10 days. For some reason this morning I checked it and it's dropped down to 545. I compared it to an older one and all of the info is the same (current, payment amounts, balance amounts, etc.). The only thing that is different is that one account got deleted. It was a derogatory TL medical bill. I would have assumed that this would increase the score. Does it seem weird that his score went down? That's the only difference in the report from today and a few days ago. Are these always accurate? I know they are FAKOs so I've just been looking for an upward trend and good status' across the board. When that account was deleted off his TU he got a 14 point boost and on EX a 74 point boost (another account was deleted then too)
My Equifax score recently dropped 30 points for NOT using the CC in 2 months, which had a zero balance. I called Equifax and asked why the drop since NOTHING had changed on my report. Equifax said because I have NOT used my CC in 2 months. That was the only reason. I said to the girl I understand scores can drop for non use of CC but 30 points ? She claimed she has seen reports drop 80 points for non use of a CC. Stupid rule. You would think that if a person had a CC with a zero balance and no use in 2 months score would go up.
Here is how it's listed, EQ has more accounts overall... Sorry I can't get this to format so it's easier to read... Order is TU/EX/EQ TU TOTAL ACCOUNTS: 6 OPEN ACCOUNTS: 5 CLOSED ACCOUNTS: 1 DELINQUENT: 0 DEROGATORY: 2 BALANCES: $859.00 PAYMENTS: $200.00 PUBLIC RECORDS: 0 INQUIRIES(2 years): 0 EX TOTAL ACCOUNTS: 7 OPEN ACCOUNTS: 4 CLOSED ACCOUNTS: 3 DELINQUENT: 0 DEROGATORY: 3 BALANCES: $965.00 PAYMENTS: $302.00 PUBLIC RECORDS: 0 INQUIRIES(2 years): 1 EQ TOTAL ACCOUNTS: 9 OPEN ACCOUNTS: 4 CLOSED ACCOUNTS: 5 DELINQUENT: 1 DEROGATORY: 4 BALANCES: $1245.00 PAYMENTS: $589.00 PUBLIC RECORDS: 0 INQUIRIES(2 years): 1
Sadly, a zero balance actually hurts FICO more than a very small one. I watched my score dive some when I paid off all revolving down to nothing. So I started keeping $5 on one at the end of the billing cycle just to keep the score from dropping 15 points 'just because'.
I know recently there was a discussion about how sometimes the age of the delinquent account sometimes has a stronger positive than negative on the score. IDK if that would apply here since your other two reports went up with the deletion. Do you happen to have the AaOfA from before and after the deletion?
Sorry, what is the AaofA? Don't see it in the Glossary.... I have been saving most of his reports every day so I'm sure it's something I could find out
Gotcha, let me do some calculating and I'll get back to you! I can't imagine that it changed that much... The account was only placed for collection 5/30/2012... From an appointment in 2010 I think
Okay so I've crunched some numbers.... AaofA before the item got removed was 43 months, AaofA after the item got removed is 42.5 months. So there is a little change, think that caused the drop?
Did TU and EX experience the same drop? Or are the other accounts reporting on them that aren't on EQ?
TU jumped 37 points, and 5 accounts were removed at the same time (4 other collections/derog accounts and then the most recent one) EX jumped 74 points, and 4 accounts were removed at the same time (3 other collections/derog accounts and then the most recent one) EQ was the last to delete it and there was a score drop
I'm not really too worried about the actual score at this moment, just happy to have one less derogatory account on his reports, I just thought it was kind of strange! Overall how much does AaofA impact scores? A lot of his accounts that are being removed are about 5 years old. I think it's easier to get rid of all the bad stuff then add him as a joint user on my older cards than try to keep the old bad stuff just for the sake of having older accounts.
Length of credit history accounts for 15%. When the last negative drops, you should see a massive jump in scoring. So, yes, you are correct. This is just a temporary state you're in. Just one 30-day late can plummet a score.
Thanks everyone for your help At what point can you determine if keeping an old account on there with negative information would help you more than hurt you? More specifically, my husband has a tradeline on his reports from the State of CT Child Support. He was not informed of the order, so at the beginning he had a bunch of 120 day lates. It was opened 10/2008 and he wasn't notified of the order until 1/2010. He paid in full immediately and brought it current and ever since 1/2010 it has been 'OK'. This is his oldest account. Now, I'm assuming since there are 120 day lates that it's killing his score... so I'm thinking we need to try to get rid of it. However, is there a general rule of thumb on how to measure if the good outweighs the bad? This may be helpful for future reference
That's the one thing that it's hard to tell. When your scores are higher, you'll actually get to a point where you are given conflicting 'advice' by the CRA as how to improve your scores. (One negative factor will counteract something that's listed as a positive factor right above it.) They'll never tell you the this tradeline is 5 points positive, 10 points negative, overall score 5 points negative. That would be too easy.
