Thanks...I wasn't holding out much hope that they would get directly involved. The score from each of the 3 credit services as interpreted by FICO was something like 790, 800 and 805. We mostly use the credit card versus check for the award points and always pay our monthly balances off. We were really annoyed to see that the system does not award that behavior at all...which makes zero sense. The main hit was too high a balance on the credit card account (even though the activity has a record of always being paid off entirely, monthly) so I increased the limit on the card we use the most allowing the utilization to fall under 30%. My wife has two cards she never uses but are in her own name and have been for some time and she (for good reason) wants to keep that credit history alive. She increased the limit on those two cards also. I know that a mortgage company adds all the available credit lines as a measure of exposure so I'd most likely reduce the limits if we should sell and purchase again. We got marked down for too many cards years ago and made the decision to no longer hold retail store cards then found that even though the cards were closed by us with zero balances, the credit service still regards those cards for years after closure in their credit calculations. I don't suppose the period of time a closed card remains in FICO's calculations is available? Mark
Message Edited by markg2 on 04-19-2007 09:51 AM