File this under lesson learned. Last month, I made my final payment on my car loan after 4 years of paying down the loan from ~30K. I also had a collection account that was lingering removed (pay for delete)...I go to check my credit scores today and they are LOWER on average 100points on all three credit bureaus taking me from a 650 average to 550 average. It took me a bit but I think I have figured it out. It apprears, and I may be wrong, that the FAKO scores were treating my installment loan as part of my available credit. Meaning when I payed down the 30K and last month only had $450 left on it, it was reporting as Balance of $450 with CREDIT LIMIT of $30,000 even though this is an installment loan (car loan) and not a credit card, I think they were treating it as if I was "utilizing" only $450 of my $30,000 in available credit from this source... Now that that account is closed (meaning paid off), it app rears like I had a 30K credit line that disappeared. My "real" credit utilization is very high but I am working on getting that down but God knows how soon I can raise the scores again...lesson learned...keep credit utilization low or it will screw you...not sure what I'm going to do...going to have to rent a place soon and with these scores I don't think I'll be able to...
I don't think he paid it off early, but it looks like an installment (auto) loan was treated as a revolving account. It's not supposed to be.
Quite so, Hedwig. I'd say the listing should be disputed with the credit bureaus and if it isn't fixed the matter should be taken to federal court even if it means taking action against the credit bureaus.
I'd say the lesson to learn here is to not take the FAKO scores too seriously. They are not used for anything other than "entertainment" purposes. If you're concerned about your scores go to a bank and apply for card or line of credit or just ask a bank officer if they can run your credit (just in case you wanted to apply for a loan). You'll get an inquiry on your report but you'll also get the REAL score that is used to make lending decisions. You can also go to myfico.com and pay them $15 (more or less) per CRA to have them run your score. All the rest are just numbers with little to no bearing in real life. In my case, I recently applied for a credit card. I was a bit concerned because my FAKO score was 700 (not bad, but not great). My REAL score, that is the one used by the bank, was 768 (MUCH better).
Wait so are you saying that the MYFICO.COM scores are real FICO scores? I thought they were FAKO like also...like what you would get from Truecredit etc...?
