This is another problem caused by the creditors, not you, but affect what your credit scores will be and you are guilty until proven innocent.

There are some unethical creditors out there that have discovered a flaw in the system that works for them in keeping you as a customer even though you don’t want to. This is where the creditor keeps vital information out of your experian business credit file and forces your credit scores to remain low because that information is vital to calculate your credit score. I’m talking about withholding vital and key information such as credit limit on revolving accounts. Let’s say a creditor doesn’t report your credit limit to the credit bureaus and you have a $10,000 credit limit on a card. You use a thousand dollars and it reports a high balance of $1000 but no credit limit or rather $0 credit limit. You have just now spent $1000 over limit on this credit card. What do you think this does to your credit score until you get this paid off? Yup, you are right, it knocks your credit score a doozy. You just lost a ton of points and this is done on a regular basis for the purpose of keeping customers “stuck” with the creditor, not being able to change creditors with lower rates or even to negotiate a lower rate with the creditor they are with because their credit scores are so lousy.

What to do? Well, again, you are going to have to fight with the creditor to get the credit limit posted to your credit file. This usually never happens and you are stuck with the problem. Or, join a class action lawsuit against the credit card company to get them to report the correct information on your credit files as they should be reported.

There is another strategy that may work depending upon whether you can afford it and have self-control enough to get the job done. It takes running up the balance to just under the credit limit and then paying off the balance or to a very low balance again. The purpose of this is to get the high balance reported as high as possible and then reducing that balance back to very low figures. Since the scoring modules have to have something to calculate with, since it doesn’t have the credit limit to calculate from, it will use the high credit balance to calculate from and you have just outsmarted the credit bureaus scoring modules in keeping your credit scores high. Congratulations.

How many times, when you look over your credit report… hmmm, have you ever looked over your equifax credit report preventing? Well, it’s time to look over your credit report, regularly and learn what it is saying to you so you can be a smart money handler. Ok, we’re talking about Incorrect Balances here, so when looking over your credit reports, look over your account balances. If you find that they are incorrect, there are several things going on here and several ways to correct them. Remember, it is important to have low account balances so your debt to credit ratios can remain low. (Refer to # 17, 18, 19, 20, and 21)

Incorrect balances will increase your debt to credit limit, overall debt to credit limit and cost you points in both cases.

There is a remedy but it takes calling the creditor and haggling over whether they will enter the correct balance or get it removed if it was paid off or pay your bills “on time”. (Refer to # 1) This is where you pay your bills before the reporting date to the credit bureaus. Sound advice, but you have to “do” something before it will get done. Don’t procrastinate, just do it!

It’s important to be “pro-active” with your credit. That is why we are going to teach you to do some things that will greatly enhance your credit card knowledge and help with increasing your credit score quickly. The principle of using your credit cards wisely includes using only 50% of your credit card limit. Let me explain why and what this does to your credit score.

Because the credit bureaus determine part of your credit score by how much credit you use, then keeping your credit score below the point of costing you points is where we want to teach you to be. That point is 45% debt to credit limit ratio or less. There are points that increase your credit score and points that lower your credit score. Some points to remember are this. Up to 14% debt to credit is the same as 0% used to the credit bureaus, plus or minus a few percent. Over 84% is the same as maxing out your credit cards and that is very costly in points on your credit report. Rule of Thumb – stay below 45% and or stay below 14% to keep your credit scores moving higher.

A trick to use if you need to use the capacity of your credit limit is to simply raise your credit limit. Call the number on the back of your credit card and talk nicely to the representative and say this… “Hello, I have a credit limit that is just too low for my needs, I would like to raise my credit limit, is that possible?” They will then ask you for your credit card number, verify that you are you and then check on your credit to see if you are worthy of raising your limit. This may work best after 4 months of being with Vantage Credit Alliance and the lawyers working to clean up items on your credit report or you have good credit at this point anyway. Then you will have the best chance of your credit card company saying “Yes… how much do you need?” That is when you say to them… “Oh, could you double it?” or if you have a business… “I need $40,000.” Or what ever you feel that your business may need.

Some businesses could use up to $100k or $200k. Don’t go overboard if you are not in control of your spending… otherwise… ask whatever you want. Now, they may not give you what you ask for but if they double what you already have, then you have instantly increased your credit score, because increasing your limit, just lowered your debt to credit ratio. AWESOME!!!

Here are the facts… when you refinance a loan, we are assuming it is an installment loan and not a revolving loan, because you don’t refinance a revolving loan unless you crashed it and it is closed and they just want their money back. This is a bad thing and just cost you a ton of points. I have seen a revolving loan closed because of bad payments cost up to a hundred points by scheduling a payment program to pay off the loan. So, we are talking only about refinancing installment loans. This will cost you 7 different ways because it will touch upon 7 different scoring “reason codes”.

Reason codes are the codes found on credit reports that a creditor pulls when you apply for credit and explain to them why they don’t want to let you apply for credit because these codes explain the problems associated with your credit report. Guess what, the credit bureaus get a credit fixmycreditsite.com don’t put these on your credit report. We are really curious why not, because it would be really helpful for you if they did. Perhaps they don’t want to help you get a good score? Hmmm… I have my own suspicions.

Ok, back to the problem at hand… refinancing installment loans. When you refinance an old loan into a new one, you have started with a hard inquiry (1), have now lost the history of the old loan (2) and at the same time created a new loan (3). There is no payment history (4) and the credit bureau doesn’t have enough information to calculate a score (5). It has a 100% debt to credit limit ratio (6) and increases your overall debt to credit limit ratio (7). All of these factors will cost your points and lower your credit scores.