Baddies removed

[ecxpa]

Been working on getting some baddies off my EQ report throuh disputes of late payments on paid out accounts.  I had one 90 day and multiple 30-60  days late payments reporting.  Even though these were over 3 years old I felt like the 90 day late payment was killing me if EQ got pulled.  I was going throuh a divorce and the exwife was not keeping up her end of the bargain.  They removed the entire accounts, total of 4 instead of just the late payments.  I guess this may affec my AAOA since this accounts went back to 2005 in some cases.  Anyway shouldn't my EQ score improve with the removal of these accounts.  I think in the end I wiil be better off loosing the age factors benefits  on these accounts than keeping them to improve my AAOA.  Any comments appreciated.

[user5387]

If an arbitrary account is deleted from your report, it may help or hurt your AAoA, depending on its age relative to the overall average.

It might be worth doing some math and calculating your old and new AAoAs.

It's hard to quantify this situation, but my guess is that the net outcome here is typically a win.  I'd certainly prefer to have derogatories disappear, even if it means a substantial AAoA hit.

[ecxpa]

My AAOA on EQ is 3 yrs 12 mos; why it isn't just 4 years is beyond me......but I don't really understand the AAOA thing or how important it is.  Prior to the deletion of the accounts my AAOA was 4yr and 2 mos.  Just glad to have the late payments gone even if it means losin the acct history.  Now hopefully my fico will go up a few points........I hope losing the 90 day late will give me a big bump......but then it was over 3 years old.

[user5387]

A higher AAoA helps your scores by demonstrating that you're a more mature credit user.

Derogatories hurt your score, and the impact diminishes over time.

I expect that derogatories typically dominate AAoA considerations, though if the derogatories are very old, this might not be true.  Even in such a situation, derogatories look bad on a manual review.