Why do some closed accounts continue reporting?

[Revelate]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I would think that accounts would fall off of reports based on the closing date of the account (after 10 years) not the date last reported.  If the date last reported mattered, people could contact their creditors at the 9 year mark and some up with some BS to try to get them to update (report) it... like their name or address, something basic to reset the clock.  That to me would just seem too easy and surely someone would have figured out that loophole at this point already to artificially inflate AAoA.

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Possibly maybe even probably, but it's hard to know how the bureaus individually coded their exclusion system... with your busted line what do the bureaus suggest is the fall off date?  I can't check unfortunately as EX has it right, I can't get my EQ for verfication reasons (EQ you suck) and TU has a dispute in flight so I can't get that till that clears in another couple of weeks.

[Revelate]

 This is a bug somewhere between Sync and TU in my case: it appears to be reporting monthly as Closed / Closed By Consumer.  It's going to be interesting to see if this keeps up though I suspect it will get fixed at some point elsewhere besides Experian... and the other bureaus may wonder why EX is kicking their asses, because they don't have stupid crap like this.

The above the fold info for presumed exclusion though:

Date Closed:	03/17/2016
Date Paid:	03/04/2016

Because of my lien fiasco with TU and then their own silliness I have a December and January report:

December:

Balance $0

CBC

CLO

High Balance: High balance of $290 from 03/2015 to 03/2016; $290 from 12/2016 to 12/2016

Credit Limit: Credit limit of $1,600 from 03/2015 to 03/2016; $1,600 from 12/2016 to 12/2016

Jan: (identical to the March 16 entry other than Amount Paid, December is just now blank with the pretty OK)

Balance $0

Amount Paid $0

Past Due $0

CBC

CLO

High Balance: High balance of $290 from 03/2015 to 03/2016; $290 from 01/2017 to 01/2017

Credit Limit: Credit limit of $1,600 from 03/2015 to 03/2016; $1,600 from 01/2017 to 01/2017

[RobertEG]

When a revolving account is closed by the creditor, it precludes the consumer from continuing to increase the debt balance.

It does not end the continued or increased delinquency status of the unpaid debt.

Monthly reporting adds the additionaly, positive statement by the creditor that the debt remains unpaid, and that the period of account delinquency has increased.

FCRA 623(a)(2) requires any party who has reported information to a CRA to promptly update their reporting as necessary to maintain its current accuracy.

Updated reporting can properly show increased delinquency (time since last reported delinquency status) and/or increased amount of the debt.

Updated reporting is required if any information has changed since prior reporting.

Once a delinquent debt has been paid and the current status is updated to show paid, CRA policy instructs the creditor to discontinue regular updating if no information has changed since their prior reporting. 

[Anonymous]

Robert,

That makes sense regarding a closed account where debt still exists and thus data is still changing month to month (payments, interest, etc).  I would like to point out however that my accounts referenced for the purpose of this thread discussion were paid in full, closed and thus had no different information to report yet they still continually report "OK" every month. 

[RobertEG]

It is common for credit reports to post an "OK" when no reporting was received from the furnisher for that month.

It does not necessarily mean the furnisher actually reported that month.

[Anonymous]

Hi BBS!  As a followup to your helpful back and forth with RobertEG during the last 72 hours, the following might resolve the uncertainty.

As I read my TU and EQ reports from Credit Karma, there is a specific field called DATE LAST REPORTED.  That's a different field from Date Opened, Date Closed, Date of Last Payment, etc. (all of which are different fields on the report).

Rather than relying on the OK's, what is your Date Last Reported?  Are you consistently seeing, each time you pull your reports, a date (for this field) within the last 45 days?

If so, then it sounds like the creditor is in fact reporting your account every 30 days.  It would answer (one way or another) REG's conjecture that the OK's are in your case unrelated to actual regular monthly reporting by the creditor to the CRA.

[Anonymous]

Hey there CGID!

Yes, the date last reported is constantly updating from month to month when I get a "OK" reported.  Back on page 1, post 5 I indicated the "last reported" dates which at the time were October/November of 2016.  The last reported dates of those 3 accounts now are 12/22/16, 12/31/16 and 1/14/17.  Again, all 3 have been closed for years.

As you stated above, the fact that the reported dates keep changing to me suggests that these 3 creditors are still in fact reporting monthly to the bureaus on closed accounts.

I still am not certain as to why this is happening.  Someone else recently started a thread on this very topic, citing the same issue that I'm experiencing.

[Anonymous]

Some time in the last year or two I think I remember starting a thread discussing a related perplexity, which is why a creditor sometimes goes out of its way to actively delete an account from your report, well after it was closed but also well before it has been closed for ten years -- e.g. sometime in the region of 2-8 years, say.

That's uncommon, but it does happen.  One of the reasons that was cited was "housekeeping" -- and when I asked for a fuller explantaion of what that meant, the person explained that it saved the creditor from continuing to have to report it every month.  I thought that was odd and said that my understanding is that the creditor would have stopped reporting it a few months after it closed, and so deleting it shouldn't save the creditor any additional work.  But a number of people chimed in and agreed that creditors often continued to send monthly updates of the same closed account, and that this might be one reason they deleted them early..

I think this was all in the broader context of the thread, which was to tackle the question of why there wasn't more consistency about when an account falls off your report.  I.e. why don't they always stay on exactly 10 years after Date Closed, +/- a month.  Why do some accounts clearly stay on for 12, 14, 16 or even more years after a clear Date Closed on the report?  And why are some removed much sooner?

One answer to why they get removed sooner was that it sometimes happens that a consumer is disputing (possibly repeatedly) data on the closed account.  So the creditor basically says: You are really irritating!  Delete!  It's easier to just delete it then to keep responding to the CRA asking them about it.  But aside from that, there are still cases where the tradeline gets removed before the 10-year mark.

[Anonymous]

I mentioned my 3-4 BK accounts earlier in this thread that were still reporting on my TU. I did dispute them (once!) in December, and two or three of them were removed altogether. On break at work and can't remember the numbers exactly.☺ But I'll take them being gone any day of the week!

[Revelate]

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@RobertEG wrote:

It is common for credit reports to post an "OK" when no reporting was received from the furnisher for that month.

It does not necessarily mean the furnisher actually reported that month.

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Are you suggesting that my CBC/CLO $0 for December was likewise some default Transunion update?

Date Updated: 12/16/2016

Date Updated: 01/17/2017'

It's still reporting post close, pretty certain this is on Sync rather than TU, though yes, if the account is still open, and no data is received, once some update happens everything in between goes to OK at least in my experience.