Offer to suppress account by creditor

[Anonymous]

So I've been on a GW mission and had an interesting offer from a creditor.  I sent a bunch of GW emails to a major retail store explaining my story on why I had a couple of late payments.  I received a callback today from someone from corporate saying they couldn't delete the late payments etc. etc.   The rep DID say they could "suppress" my account.  He explained that it would be as if the account never existed, but I could still use the line of credit.  Has anyone ever heard of this?  He said they would only report to the CRA's if & when I close the account.

My problem is that I have a limited amount of open credit lines.  Have a mortgage, BOA credit card, and this other retail account that's about to vanish.  I did just get approved for a new car loan, but had to factory order the car, so the loan is going to expire before the car arrives.  Will have to apply again with my local credit union.

Will it be worse to have that open account with the two recent late payments or have one less open credit line?  I could always just apply for a new account.  My scores are in the 680's right now.  In addition, I may refinance my mortgage within the next couple of weeks.

As always, thanks for any advice!!!!

[Shogun]

My personal preference?  I like a clean record.

[Anonymous]

I'm leaning that way as well.  So suppressing an account as offered is something that's legit?  

[Shogun]

Never heard it termed that way before.  Guess it just means they won't report the TL.  Nothing wrong with the that.  The law states any information posted must be correct.  Nothing states it has to be reported at all.

[Anonymous]

I was looking for an estimated guess on the score impact of leaving the lates on there vs. removing the CL altogether.  Any ideas??  

Thanks for the replies.

[Anonymous]

They will remove it if they say "surpress."

[spike69]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I was looking for an estimated guess on the score impact of leaving the lates on there vs. removing the CL altogether.  Any ideas??  

Thanks for the replies.

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I hate to make this reply but the real answer is "it depends" How old is this trade line? Deleting the TL means deleting the age of that account- that can be a negative. Removing the "baddie" a positive. Possible they will cancel one another out and the score impact is minimal.

A quote from Chase: " We really only look at what is on the report not the score." This was a lightbulb for me. I have a clean report after one year of rebuilding and my scores are between 680 and 730. That said- I am still limited by the fact that my oldest account since my clean up (which included deleting some old accounts that had baddies attached) is 10 months old and as such my credit opportunities remain limited while I wait for my report to show some more age along with consistent payments and low UTL.

Hope this helps a little

[Anonymous]

This is one that could go either way. Retail revolvers have less strength than Bank cards, but you're still left with only one revolving account and FICO likes to see at least three. OTOH, you're planning on two major credit additions, an Auto Loan plus a mortgage refi. The auto loan probably would not care about new credit accounts, but the mortgage lender probably would. There are just so many variables involved its impossible to know which way your score might move.

I would say that IF you can push back the mortgage refi for at least three months, then apply for one, or possibly two new bank revolving lines now, and let them suppress this one.

[redbeard]

The answer really lies in how old this account is compared to your other accounts.

I recently had a problem on my report where a tradeline started reporting twice, once under the current creditor and once under the original creditor, but only on 1 credit report.

There were several late payments from 2 years ago on this particular tradeline (or else I wouldn't have cared so much). 

The way this was fixed, and I thought it would raise my score, is they deleted (suppressed) both tradelines.  They both vanished.  I thought, great!, but then my score tanked about 20 points because of a fairly big hit to my AAoA (about 4 years got knocked off).  Those points have since returned, though I'm not sure why.  My credit report LOOKS much better though, by not having a series of late payments reporting.

In your case, if you are looking at refinancing in the near future, it would be better to have this gone.  Recent late payments have a way of limiting mortgage options.

Dan

[Anonymous]

Just throwing an update out there.  I received a letter from the creditor saying they would delete the account.  I've verified with the 3 major CRA's and they've confirmed there is no such account on my report.  I haven't seen any score changes yet though on myfico dashboard.