I'm so confused and really upset. 2 weeks ago my FICO was 712. Then my Discover and Umbrella accounts hit and my score went to 697. The reasons my score was not higher then were :First Reason Code: 39 Your first reason code is 39, â??Serious delinquencyâ?. (one account from 1995 that's due to drop off in August with 1 30 day late, 1 90 day late). Second Reason Code: 10 Your second reason code is 10, â??Proportion of balances to credit limits on bank/national revolving or other revolving accounts is too highâ?. Third Reason Code: 6 Your third reason code is 6, â??Too many consumer finance company accountsâ?. (had a few in 1993/94 and then one in 1997) Fourth Reason Code: 14 Your fourth reason code is 14, â??Length of time accounts have been establishedâ?. I've had credit since 1988, but in the last 4 months opened up 4 new accounts, 5 if you count refinancing my mortgage. Today I log in and my score is now 675. The previous score of 697 was from *2* days ago. The difference is this and only this - nothing else has updated, all my balances are the same, no inquiries - my 90 day late dropped off of that account, now it just shows a 30 day late... the ONLY freakin' negative on the report is a 30 day late from 1995. My score dropped 22 points. NOW my reason codes are:First Reason Code: 6 Your first reason code is 6, â??Too many consumer finance company accountsâ?.Second Reason Code: 2 Your second reason code is 2, â??Level of delinquency on accountsâ?. Third Reason Code: 1 Your third reason code is 1, â??Amount owed on accounts is too highâ?. Fourth Reason Code: 10 Your fourth reason code is 10, â??Proportion of balances to credit limits on bank/national revolving or other revolving accounts is too highâ?. My FICO is lower now than when I started fixing stuff - and I had 27 late mortgage payments on that and a bunch of lates on a credit card! I feel like someone kicked me in the stomach. I wonder if I dispute those old finance company tradelines if that'll help. They're due to fall off in a year or so anyway (10 years will be up then)..........My credit is so much better now... yet my score is so much lower. I don't understand it. I know part of it is I took advantage of the 0% from Discover - that card is just about maxed out - but like my Citi card - it shows a $900 balance with a cl of $32,000. But those were both on there when my score was 697. Ozzy.
If you figure it out let me know. I posted a few days ago. I had an account go from "included in BK" to "paid in full/never late" and I lost 2 points. Makes you wonder. Nothing else on my report changed that day either. Kim
Shifting balances and credit utilization are huge score attributes.. Even though your 90 day fell off, if you have a new Discover card that you B;T'ed a large balance to, and are near or at the max, that would explain why your score dropped severely. I've seen 20-40 point drops on my report when my credit utilization is high. jmart
That was the case when it dropped the first time - but the 2nd drop I can't figure out - a drop of 22 points on Equifax, but then on Experian I gained points for the same thing. Makes absolutely no sense. =-( The Discover was a new card and I BT from my hubby's so I wasn't having duplicate balances on my report. Ozzy.
I am in the same situation. May 3 my fico was 620. Today, May 7, my fico is 589. Guess what. I had a charged off account from 1996 deleted. Nothing more, nothing less. Go figure.
Having "good" credit can get you a lower score than having "bad" credit. In the early to mid nineties, as the number of BK's increased significantly, the credit card people began to get freaked out because a large number of people with "perfect" credit were filing for BK. Not a single late pay or any other indication of trouble, then boom: BK. This is when credit scoring began to take off. The credit card people needed a way to figure out which of their "perfect" customers was going to file BK next. Analysis of past events showed that high balance to credit ratios and higher than average number of inquiries differentiated the "perfect credit BK" from other prime accounts. Therefore, it's now far easier to get a lower score with a perfect payment record. With late pays or other derogatory in your file, you are scored as a "known quantity." Lenders have decades of experience risk-rating people like you. But when all of your negatives drop off, you move into uncharted territory. Because you now have a perfect payment record, the models are actually rating your risk of filing BK. Nobody has any idea about any cause and effect relationship between high balances, inquiries and BK. It's all based merely on historical data. This causes the weird discontinuity of logic that occurs when removal of a derogatory item (or the addition of a positive item) lowers your score.
Ozzyburger, You state that you had 27 late mortgage payments. How did you go about getting them deleted? I have quite a few with a closed Countywide mortgage due to a crappy divorce. Any info. would be greatly appreciated!!!!!
The bank was lazy I guess. We had paid them off when we refinanced in November. In January I disputed them for the heck of it.. figured nothing ventured, nothing gained, and they never responded. So *poof*, the lates came off - but then I had to fight with them to get our reports to show the account was closed.. we didn't need 2 mortgages on our reports. That took about a month or so and far as I know, it's a done deal. Nothing ever popped back up on our reports <knock on cheap computer desk wood>. It was really nothing more than dumb luck getting those off our reports. Ozzy.
