callmethedude

Thanks Clairissa. Just got a letter from TU - they deleted an old judgment that was there since 2005 (was due to fall off Aug 2012).  I had written a letter asking them to delete the negative tradeline early, and they did.  The next day was when I noticed this huge dump in my TRisk score - paying off two cars was nice, and the judgment removed finally (it was satisfied long ago - an ex-wife's refusal to pay left me holding the judgment bag - my only negative hit in 20 years of history) apparently results in TU dropping my score.  I'm still waiting to see if Experian honored my letter to remove the judgment early.  Equifax removed it 2 years ago at my request, so of course that score is very, very high (almost 800).  Unfortunately, hardly any credit card company uses Equifax, so I'm more focused on getting TU and Experian up there (Exp FICO is now around 700, with VantageScore being 709, the closest I've seen them to each other).  If they dump the judgment like TU did, I'll finally be back up over 720.

Typically over 700, but keep in mind that if you're approved, and you take on more credit from other providers or increase utilization on any other accounts, thus lowering your score to the high 600s, AMEX may cancel your account out of the blue.  This happened to us - we went back to AMEX earlier this year - had other credit cards but nearly 0% utilization.  Then we used one of the $5000 revolving accounts that had a 0 balance to buy furniture on 0% interest for 2 years.  The total expenditure was around $4600, leaving only $400 left and nearly 97% utilization on that card.  Score went from 716 to 686 the next month, and when using our AMEX card at Costco - it was declined.  Called AMEX and they said they cancelled the card due to a drop in credit rating.  Apparently this is in the contract somewhere, so apparently AMEX only wants you to have their card with any balance - if you have others, they may dump you.

They make conventional 5% down loans?  I thought the minimum was 10% for conventional.

I recently read an article (can't recall the source) that stated that some finance companies are considering beginning to report lates to bureaus as few as 5 days late.  Their goal is to use these as excuses to place the blame on the consumer for increasing interest rates - thus going around the laws/restrictions recently placed on them by Congress.  With computer systems doing the reporting, this will be an easy change for finance companies - just program it and be done with it.  I predict that a credit score of 700+ will be a rare thing in 5-10 years, and that's exactly what finance companies want.

If you're a Costco member, $7.49 per month gets you free looks at all three scores and reports, once per month through their "IdentityGuard" program.  It beats having to pay $30 for three scores once every few months.  And, they notify you via email if there are any changes, positive or negative, including hard inquiries.  I've been a member for several years and love it.  My only complaint is - you only get one new pull per month - you can see the same pull for the month after the pull, but you can't do a new one until exactly one month after the previous pull. They also have a credit simulator that you can use to determine how certain actions (positive and negative) will affect your FICO scores - great tool when you're planning on paying off debt over a period of a few months like we're doing now.  One thing we noticed - we had planned to pay off all consumer credit card debt by January 2012, so I modeled this at the IdentityGuard site.  Score for all three bureaus increases as much as 31 points.  However, I did something a little different on the second model - pay everything off except one credit card - leaving ~20% of the total credit limit on the account.  The result:  the score increased on Experian by more than 50 points!  So having at least one card with some utilization present after paying off all other credit is apparently a positive!

Today - new Update - another 2 point drop in TransRisk, and a +7 gain in Vantage!  What the hell is going on?  I can pull both reports via my Costco IdentityGuard account and I see no differences between the two accounts.  In fact, both are reporting the same deductions in balances.  Does TransUnion dump your score for paying off your debt???  I was over 700 on TU and now I'm around 640!  I was around 660 on Experian and now I'm over 700.  All information is the SAME. Surely there's some one here than can supply some hint as to why this might be?

Get this - I paid off a car loan and a $1500 credit card last month.  My TransRisk just dropped 31 points, but my Vantage increased 34 points!  No inquiries, no new accounts, only deductions in other account balances and the two payoffs. And they say these bureaus use the same scoring method!  Personally, I'm convinced that finance companies give kick backs to the 3 credit bureaus to do whatever it takes to ding credit scores.  The reason - slightly lower credit scores gives finance companies justification to increase rates, even though the consumers have perfect credit histories.  There's a reason the credit bureaus have no explanation for some of the ridiculous things they consider when calculating credit scores - finance companies are paying them to be more creative with determining "risk".

I have the same issue - my CK Transrisk score is in the high 600s.  The credit card company that also claims to use Transrisk and posts it on my account page has been stuck at a paltry 536 for almost 1 year (my score has never been that low).  I've emailed them and of course the people that respond are complete robots - telling me some canned gibberish about scores being affected by this and that, blah blah blah.  It's a pain in my *** that there is such a fluctuation in scores between bureaus and CK.  My Equifax is nearly 800, Experian 717, and TU 676, but multiple reviews and comparisons between all three reports show them as IDENTICAL - all information matches.  I've written Experian and TU and they again give me the canned word salad that talks around my question and never gives a straight answer.  It's a joke.

My experience is the inquiries will stay for 2 years, but after 6 months they supposedly don't ding your score "as much".   Hope this helps.