Why is it that some credit card companies keep on reporting a card's high balance even though in the meantime you bring down the high balance, as compared to other credit card outfits who report balances as of the day of them reporting. For example my Wamu card. THe high balance of that card once upon a time was $1264. That amount was brought down to 0/zero, in November of last year, with a tank of gas here and there since then. They still report my credit limit - $2500 - correctly - but on the other hand still report the high balance as $1264. This kind of reporting, misrepresenting credit utilization - is pure BS. What can be done about it?
It is the balance field that is used to determine utilization, not the high balance. Don't worry about.
Thank you. Now I have another question: Is each account scored differently, or is the scoring(utilization) based on total available credit from all cards vs. total balances on all cards?
Utilization is on a per-account basis. If you have 3 cards each with a limit of 1,000, it's better to have $300 charged one each card than to have $900 on one and $0 on the other two even though in aggregate, the net is the same.
While it matters what your utilization on each card is, I believe that part of the score is total utilization as well. Otherwise my score should be lower, since I maxed several cards on good BT offers. And yes, it shows in negatives that I have two cards over 50% utilization. Of course, no one except Fair Isaac knows the true answer to the question.
