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TIL my credit jumped 40 points after I disputed one old medical bill
I saw the change 3 weeks after mailing the dispute letter to TransUnion. Has anyone else had a single deletion make that big a difference in their score?
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johnson.river11d ago
Wait, did you check if that medical bill was even supposed to be on your report in the first place? A lot of times these old medical debts get sold to different collectors and they verify them wrong, so getting it removed can reset your whole utilization picture if it was dragging down your average account age. That 40 point swing probably means that single negative item was the main thing holding you back, not that your score was unstable like some people say. It's wild how one tiny mistake from three years ago can keep your score stuck until you finally get around to fighting it.
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You know that big jump probably means your score was artificially low before, so a 40 point swing just shows how unstable those scoring models are to begin with.
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max_cooper2111d ago
Nah, I gotta push back on lily_cooper's take here. A 40 point jump from deleting one item doesn't mean the model's unstable, it means that specific negative item was weighing down your score way more than people realize. Credit scores factor in mix of accounts and derogatory marks differently, so if that medical bill was the only mark on an otherwise clean file, its removal just let everything else shine. It's pretty consistent actually when you think about how much weight they give to recent negatives.
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