Creditor Account Variation on Reports

[Anonymous]

HI All,

I have some questions regarding disputing / verifying items on my credit report:

(1) My actual credit report only shows partial account numbers - (ex. 3846xxx-xx).  So when writing a letter to verify/dispute, is that sufficient?

(2) When one company acquires another, (ex. BOA buys Countrywide) - both Countrywide and BOA (same acct) show up on my credit.  Should I ask that one be removed, since they are effectively the same account?

(3) One creditor account appears twice (with different creditor addresses) - one says "Current" and one says "Current closed".  Should I ask that one of those be deleted?

(4) If a paid / closed account is still being reported as current / paid as agreed, is that good?  Or would it be better if the account was closed.  Does the fact that there is not any actual balance revolving affect my FICO score?

Thank you,

EP

[llecs]

1) IME, I always took extra steps to get the account numbers, including calling them and pulling the full reports from all 3 CRAs to try to piece that together. I didn't work that hard for CAs, though.

2) No, you are losing history by doing that.

3) No, again you are losing history on the closed account. Your FICO can drop by asking them to delete.

4) Leave it as is. Closed or open, it is scored the same if it was closed by the creditor at some point. Even if it read as open, that can help in some situations more than reading closed. Usually it is closed and isn't always reported as such though scored as closed. Sometimes they hide the status in the comments.