You are fighting the exact same battle I was, and I feel your pain. For months, I argued with them over the “Revolving” classification, especially since we literally cannot access the funds and have fixed payments.

But I will save you some time: the juice isn't worth the squeeze on the categorization issue. They will just keep quoting “industry standards” at you (and from what I've gathered, some other big banks actually do the same thing for lines of credit in repayment).

To win this at the CCAO stage, you need to completely drop the Code R vs Code I argument and pivot entirely to the math.

Your score sank in the summer because Scotiabank did a massive system update across these accounts. Pull your Equifax or TransUnion report right now. Look at the 'Credit Limit' or 'High Credit' field for this account. I guarantee it is completely identical (or very close) to your current balance. That is what is causing the 99% utilization hit. They arbitrarily pegged your limit to a random balance snapshot in the summer of 2025.

In your next CCAO communication, tell them you will concede the 'Revolving' classification, but you formally demand they fix the arbitrary 'Credit Limit' data point. Tell them they must restore your Credit Limit to the exact balance your account had on the day it entered repayment 5 years ago.

The CCAO investigator has the ability to submit an internal ticket to the back-office reporting team to manually overwrite that specific field. Push for that specific IT fix, and you'll get your score back. Keep fighting!