My wife was added by her father as an AU in 1993 on a AT&T Universal CC. To date the CL is $6300 (her highest TL) and it was also her oldest TL (by 4 years) with 0 lates. Unfortunately, dad-in-law always kept util% between 90 and 101% for the last 6 months or longer. My wife's other TLs totaled $2900 in all other CCs.
So, our dilemma was: to cancel or not to cancel. Well we disputed via TU and EX yesterday and already TU updated her reports and the before and after FICOs are in.
Why did we delete? According to FICO, 10% of the scores goes to length of credit history and 30% towards amount of debt. We figured that over 65% of all revolving debt would come from that card alone. Since we had no control at all the util% of the AT&T card, well it became a no-brainer.
To preface this, DW's util% with the ATT card on 12/31/07 was 88%. The ATT card alone was over 97%. The TU FICO score on 12/31 was...590. The TU FICO score on 1/9/08 is ...579.
The util today without AT&T is 86%. We went into debt before Christmas and sent payments on the 1st. Only one of 6 was reporting that. Util today is really around 45%. Also, as a side note, DW has a CapOne CO listed with a balance of $736 with a CL of $250. This account is absolutely factored into util%. I want this off but SOL ends this summer. Even if we bring all of her balances to $0, the lowest util% would ever go to is 24%!!!