scott1961 said:I have a Chase, MBNA and RBS card. How many do they want me to have? Be sure to take the reason codes with a HUGE grain of salt.

They are always suspect as true explanations of your score, but VERY much so when you're in the stratosphere, as you are. I woudln't be suprised if next month you might have a similar code saying, "you have too many revolving lines."

re: consistently getting TU pulls for citi -- this seems to be an unusual pattern, given the experiences that others have had. (me: ~20/20 TU pulls for citi, others in NY seem to have varied pulls)

re: AMEX -- I got a 2nd inconsistent pull -- that is, 14 of the last 16 are EQ, w/1 TU and 1 EX.

I have no other experiences w/such levels of consistency (caveat: USAA and PenFed seem to use nothing but EQ for most cardholders) -- I have not been as scrupulous about keeping track of inqs w/other issuers, such as Chase or BofA.

Again, I wonder how much region (eg, NYC) has to do with this -- I would imagine there are a sig. number of other posters w/data points of their own from NYC...? The pessimistic case is that even if for some reason, my locale makes for high consistency in pulls, most other locales that I could switch to would have inconsistent pulls.

re: time spent at a given address and FICO
yes, the wording they use seems almost deliberately ambiguous...

when i get the chance, I might try calling up the specific credit analyst/spokesperson at Fair Isaac who was willing to comment, on the record, on certain cards that failed to report not only limit, but also high balances (various signature cards, for instance), and their effects on utilization. (back then, 1-2 years ago, he stated that they don't include such card balances in utilization calcs at all.) I suspect the only reason he was willing to contact me, was a strongly worded (though completely neutral) email I sent from person@law.someschool.edu...but he also gave me contact info for future questions (which I stuck somewhere).

I found this to be very interesting regard the scoring models used by CRA's

Credit Model

chaosinla said:I found this to be very interesting regard the scoring models used by CRA's

Credit Model

Yes -- though keep in mind that the distinction in that presentation between what goes in your FICO score, and what is used by card issuers in their internal credit models, is poorly preserved. For instance, your equifax report won't say if you have checking accounts or savings accts, but you will get asked that question by citi when applying for a card.

lazmason said:In terms of your fico score your profession and time at address has absolutely no bearing at all.

I was of the prior belief that neither of these are inputs, continue to believe that profession is not, and my quotes above seem to strongly indicate that time at address is not an input. However, the phrasing that I quote above from fair isaac doesn't strictly rule out time at address, but seems to (90%, in my opinion) rule out not just address, but also time at address. Thus, I'm curious about that (again, in my opinion) 10% possibility.

Separately, it is highly useful to see how important those non-FICO, but common-to-most issuers' internal scoring models inputs, help or hinder one's creditworthiness...

DaveHanson said:lazmason said:In terms of your fico score your profession and time at address has absolutely no bearing at all.What's your source for this?

Profession isn't something that the CRCs would know. They can, OTOH, determine appox time at one residence, and several report it plays a role.

I doubt time at residence plays a role since it can only be determined "approximately". Also, many credit issuers ask your time at residence along with income, if you have a checking and/or savings account, etc. All of which are not FICO.

lazmason said:Dispute the employment info if you have any on file with 3 CRA's. Once its deleted tell me if you score changed. *hint* IT WONT. Ditto for changing your address.Even if that were true (and I'm not saying it's not), it doesn't follow that it makes no difference in general.

I'm confident that employment makes no difference, in partly because there's no way this could even be determined by the CRCs, and partly because there's no evidence (anecdotal or otherwise) that it really does matter.

Addresses are different. CRCs really CAN tell whether someone has bounced around from address to address, it really DOES correlate with being a bigger credit risk, and there HAVE been reports of this making a difference in people's profile.

I'm not saying that current models all weight the address. As the OP notes, there are several models, and they are changing all the time.

I'm just saying that your own experience isn't sufficient reason for stating categorically that "time at address has absolutely no bearing at all."

I gather you haven't seen any 3rd party sources making this claim then...?

To add, I do not have any employment listed on my credit reports. It doesn't affect your score, at all. I don't want it on there for privacy reasons. Anyone that wants to know if I have a job can ask me.

Same goes for addresses, although I have heard of people getting declined for putting an address on their application that doesn't match the address on their credit file, this again does not affect your score.

If anything, it helps on a "not mine" dispute, since that is one thing they check.

yeah its never come up as an issue, but at the same time i dont want creditors to think i move every 6 months.

And while the name of employer doesnt affect the credit score, i cant help but think it DOES matter to a human looking at the report.

if you call thier 800 numbers and select the option for you were recently denied credit you can a copy whenever you want

I apologize in advance for probably asking a stupid question, but I've heard so many contradicting things and I'd love to clear this up. I have quite a few credit cards, only 2 of which I actually use (because they have 5% back, they are both relatively new cards). The oldest cards I have are the ones I never use. I have been told by friends that this is hurting my credit score - having a *rather large* amount of available credit and using practically none of it on a monthly basis. But on this thread I read that low utilization is a good thing - but is that related to balance transfers and not regular monthly useage? Basically, my question is...should I cancel these cards that I never use and never will use, or should I continue to leave them sitting in a drawer gathering dust? Or should I be using them? The reason I didn't cancel them earlier is because I thought that the older *open* credit cards you have, the better...but I read here that it doesn't matter if they've been closed. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. My husband and I might be looking to buy a house in the next 1-2 years and I want to maximize my credit score. Thanks!!

On a related note...what about store credit cards? I have a store credit card that I never use...should I cancel that? Thanks again!