Association Terminated *UPDATE*

[atarvuzdar]

A friend of mine and I are working on rebuilding our credit together, I figure it's easier to do it with a little moral support.

So when he pulled his credit reports he noticed that he was listed as an AU on one of his ex's CC's and the current balance was just over the credit limit. Even though the report said the CC was beneficial to him, I explained that 1) the util % was killing his score, and 2) if the balance was over the limit, even though there were no lates on the account that I'd be willing to bet that his ex was in a financial bind and was about to miss a payment or two which would really hurt. So, he called up the CCC and explained that he did not know he was an AU on the account and wanted to be taken off. His conversation with the rep was successful and the rep told him that he was removed as an AU and his credit reports would be updated after the next statement date on 1/27.

He got a new report from one of the credit bureaus today after successfully having an unrelated item removed. The new report now indicates that he's not an AU on his ex's credit card, but the card is still listed on the report with "Association Terminated" where it had once stated "Authorized User". It also, incidentally, now shows the account is 30-59 days late...

So my question: is this account affecting his credit score now that it says Association Terminated? The concern is obviously the balance being over the limit and the account now showing as late. Should he try to get the CCC to remove the tradeline completely? While the age on the account is 6 years old his AAoA is 6.5 years, so technically I think it's holding his AAoA down, if anything.

Any thoughts/help would be very much appreciated.

[RobertEG]

Authorized user "accounts" are the black-hole of the credit reporting system. 

The FCRA regulates the reporting of information based on credit and business transactions of a consumer.  It does not regulate the concoction of allowing information not related to a consumer's own credit history from being reported to a CRA or used in credit scoring.  The FCRA, enacted back in 1970, either did not consider this anomoly, or choose to ignore it.  So it is conducted based only on internal policies of creditors, CRAs, and those who produce credit scores.

Most creditors, upon termination of AU status, will simply report deletion of the entire account from the user's credit file.  However, yours is not the first post I have seen where the creditor has reported an "Association terminated" code, rather than a deletion.  I was not even aware of the existence of such a reporting code until viewing other posts that received such reporting.  A consumer's obligation on a debt is normally recorded under what is called an "ECOA Code," which records the legal obligation for debt as either sole, joint, or "maker" (co-signer, responsible on default of the principle).  Not being legally responsible, there is no ECOA code for an AU.  So apparently the CRAs have concocted a new code, unrelated to the consumer's legal obligation.

So I can think of no way under the FCRA to deal with this fantasy reporting.  Since the CRAs will delete prior reporting upon instruction of the "creditor," I would pursue the deletion of this psuedo-code by calling the creditor and asking them to report total deletion of their prior reporting to your credit file.

[atarvuzdar]

Thanks RobertEG, I was thinking this was the case. Hopefully he has some luck with doing this. Much obliged!

[LS2982]

---

@atarvuzdar wrote:

A friend of mine and I are working on rebuilding our credit together, I figure it's easier to do it with a little moral support.

So when he pulled his credit reports he noticed that he was listed as an AU on one of his ex's CC's and the current balance was just over the credit limit. Even though the report said the CC was beneficial to him, I explained that 1) the util % was killing his score, and 2) if the balance was over the limit, even though there were no lates on the account that I'd be willing to bet that his ex was in a financial bind and was about to miss a payment or two which would really hurt. So, he called up the CCC and explained that he did not know he was an AU on the account and wanted to be taken off. His conversation with the rep was successful and the rep told him that he was removed as an AU and his credit reports would be updated after the next statement date on 1/27.

He got a new report from one of the credit bureaus today after successfully having an unrelated item removed. The new report now indicates that he's not an AU on his ex's credit card, but the card is still listed on the report with "Association Terminated" where it had once stated "Authorized User". It also, incidentally, now shows the account is 30-59 days late...

So my question: is this account affecting his credit score now that it says Association Terminated? The concern is obviously the balance being over the limit and the account now showing as late. Should he try to get the CCC to remove the tradeline completely? While the age on the account is 6 years old his AAoA is 6.5 years, so technically I think it's holding his AAoA down, if anything.

Any thoughts/help would be very much appreciated.

---

Dispute the TL with the bureaus as not yours, they will remove it.

[atarvuzdar]

---

UPDATE

My buddy went through the typical trial by fire with Cap1 to get this situation fixed.

He called one of the backdoor numbers for Cap1 to dispute the "Association Terminated" reference, as at least one of the CRA's was using the balance on the card as part of his utilization % still. (The gameplan was to dispute with the CRA if all else failed) The woman he spoke to was very nice and seemed to understand the issue. He advised her that he was an AU on another Cap1 card and did not want that to change. He made sure she understood the issue and which account he was taking issue with.

He got a letter from Cap1 about a week later, stating they had removed him as AU on the card he wasn't disputing and that they had advised the CRAs that the account should be removed. Sure enough, the incorrect account had been removed and the original one still showed "Association Terminated".

He called a different backdoor number and spoke to someone else about the issue. After a 20 minute conversation to explain what he had wanted to happen the CSR advised he would have the account deleted from the CRA's.

Finally, yesterday he received a ScoreWatch alert. The account which had shown "Association Terminated" has finally been deleted and his score jumped 34 points. His util% went from 100% to 0%.