Seeking GW Charge-Off Removal... Will It Actually Hurt Me?

[Anonymous]

I mentioned in my post in the Fitness Challenege thread that part of the reason I applied for a Best Buy Rewardzone Mastercard despite the crappy rewards structure and even worse APR was to get a positive tradeline going with HSBC. My plan is/was to build up 6 months to a year of positive history and then send a GW request for them to remove an old paid charge off for a personal loan from my report. The more I read about how much age of accounts and overall credit history plays into the FICO score, though, the more I am wondering if having that removed will actually HURT my score.

How could have a charge off removed hurt a credit score? Well, that charge off is by far the oldest account on my report. It was opened 7 years ago and aside from a mix up in the end causing the chage off (I paid until the end of my payment book forgetting about 2 deferred payments, the next time I heard from HSBC, it was charged off), it had a good payment history. If that account is removed then my credit history is shortened - substantially. My next oldest account is a student loan from June 2010. It will effectively shave 5 years off of my credit history.

So, with that charge off being as old as it is - and paid in full almost immediately after charge off - am I better off just leaving it there to increase the length of my credit history and the average age of my accounts?

[llecs]

When is the DOFD of that debt? Yes, removing your oldest account, even as a CO, will very likely cause a drop, but it also depends on when the account went bad too. For example, if it were CO'd last month, then certainly the baddie hurts more than the history helps. If the CO is 5-6+ years old, then likely by now the history helps more than the baddie hurts. DW had a 7-yo CO automatically removed last year and while one FICO increased by 30 or so, the other decreased around 10 or so, despite it reporting as a CO with a herd of lates.

If you are approaching the 7-yr mark, then I'd let it be. It'll delete on its own or even revert to a positive and report positively for another 3 years thereby helping. And as we say in here, YMMV on what it would really do if deleted.

[Anonymous]

It's a pretty old account at this point, even older that I thought now that I looked at it more. It was opened in April 2003. It charged off in April 2009 and was immediately paid in full as soon as I found out about it in May 2009. So that means it's actually 9 years old.

Again, remove that and my oldest account is from June 2010, not even 2 years ago. I'd be taking 7 years off my history...