Along with several others, we got socked with the FICO "too many revolving accounts" label last April. (Like others, no other changes on the report, but the score drops were roughly 30 points on each report.) For those stuck with this reason code, have any of you determined at what point that code goes away? I mean, have you closed enough accounts to get rid of it? They make it sound like it considers both opened and closed accounts so closing them might not make any difference anyway. The only FICO report that doesn't have the "too many revolving accounts" reason code is the one that has the least open - 17. All of the others have over 20 revolving accounts open. Has anyone else had a similar experience? Any experiences on whether under 20 revolving accounts might be the "magic number" for those saddled with this reason code? Thanks for any input anyone may have. And BTW, lest anyone think we're a bit insane for having all of these personal accounts, we use them for business and were able to fund a business expansion through them that made a huge impact on the success of our business. We went from about 75% utilization last year to about 5% currently. A bit unorthodox maybe, but it worked for us. DemPooches
Maybe this will help someone else. It appears I can now answer this one for myself. In our case, the magic number does appear to be 19. It seems this includes both revolving and open (charge) accounts. We've closed a few cc accounts in the past few weeks. They are in the process of being reported closed so its been easy to track the number of accounts and corresponding score. We're getting about a 10-15 pt bump for getting down to 19 revolving and open accounts. It'll be interesting to see if maybe 14 would get the rest of the points back. DemPooches
F.I.C.O. IS A JOKE... So if you use what you have and you are HAPPY keep the cards... You can always CLOSE any that are like over 15% UNLESS they give miles or CASH BACK... Close any cards that have a FEE that are not rewards cards... I have gotten to a point that I pay NOTHING OVER 9.99% (1.90%-7.99% TODAY)...MOST AT 4.99%-1.90%...all my 0.00% rates EXPIRED.
let me just tell you what a freakin scam that is i lost 32 pts when that happened, i am at 769 now but would have been over 800 no doubt if that hadnt happened i HIGHLY DOUBT that the avg consumer has btw 4-5, since people shop for deals very disappointing
George, I agree with you that FICO is a joke. Unfortunately, as long as it's still the system the lenders are using to determine creditworthiness, we have no choice but to attempt to maximize our scores for the best terms for our business financing. We believe the more we know about how the lousy system works, the better our odds of thriving in spite of it. DemPooches
Allen, Have you closed any accounts since then? I noticed your message read "17". One of our reports is at 17 and we don't get that reason code on it anymore. DemPooches
hrm - no havent closed anything that i know of - i think that the att univ plat is showing as PAID now instead of OPEN here is what i find really ironic: one of the positive factors i have is length of history - they state the avg consumer has 14-15 yrs of credit length BUT somehow in those 15yrs, the avg person has only 4-5 bankcards. Something there doesnt make sense. Bottom line is that fico is setup to keep the score down. Anyway they can do that they will. What they should do is show you how many points each item cost. So for example, the too many accts, cost x pts. Blah... heh
