General Credit Topics

[kc1174]

I opened an auto loan in 2004 through SunTrust. The signed contract was for $14k and all was good, but somehow the dealer messed up and informed SunTrust the loan was for $16k with an extended warranty. Then the real $14k account showed up and the other $16k account went to paid/closed with 1 month payment history even though I never paid a thing. The real account was paid closed with good history after 57 months. I didn't think it would hurt having this non-existent paid closed account on my CRs and it will drop 11/2014 anyway, but does anyone know if this negatively impacts my average account age? I have tried disputing but SunTrust just send a standard "we are reporting correctly" reply and the agencies do nothing. Next step is to ask SunTrust for a loan satisfaction / release of lein letter for this account, which they can't obviously provide since they already did that with the real account. Thanks.

[RobertEG]

I suggest you calculate your AAoA with and without the account, and see which matches your CR.

Its a simple calculation..... age of all TLs in your CR (open and closed) /tot TLs.

[kc1174]

Thanks - these auto loans are only reporting to Equifax and Experian (neither are reporting to Transunion, but that's another issue..) and the average account age for all active and paid lines with them is 20 months vs 25 months without the duplicate. By your reply, my guess is this duplicate is negatively impacting my rating? My CRs list everything for me to manually calculate, but don't show an average account age. Since I've already disputed this without success, I guess the options left are to first ask SunTrust for a letter of loan satisfaction and release of lein on the auto loan that never was, along with the VIN #, since I already have one for the real account and then send both in to the bureaus to show they're being reported inaccurately, or threaten to file suit for reporting inaccurate information. Any advice is appreciated.

[OhioCPA]

I don't see how having an eight year old account would lower AAoA from 25 months to 20 months. If you AAoA is eight years or less, the duplicate account is helping, not hurting. For it to hurt AAoA, your AAoA would have to be nine years or greater.

[kc1174]

Credit card - 1 month (active)
Credit card - 12 months (active)
Auto loan - 31 months (active)
SunTrust real account - 57 months (closed)
Duplicate - 1 month (closed)

101/4=25.25
102/5=20.4

Assuming the above math is correct and credit scores are based on average account history, the duplicate is hurting. Plus it's inaccurate. Anyway, thanks for the replies.

[kc1174]

Ps the duplicate hurts because it only shows 1 month payment history. The real account has 57 months - the erroneous one has 1 month as stated in the original post. If this was a true duplicate, then yes there would be 2 accounts with 57 months history which would equal 114 months over 2 accounts, but this duplicate is 58 months over 2 accounts.

[OhioCPA]

Your math is incorrect. Age of accounts is determined by the open date, not the number of months reporting. So for the two SunTrust accounts each reports approximately 96 months, not 57 and 1. Assuming 8 years exactly for the SunTrust accounts and that the open accounts are correct, with the duplicate account your average is about 3.9, without 2.9. Since AAoA is rounded down your AAoA is 3 with the duplicate, or 2 without. I would not dispute the duplicate since it is clearly helping.