@Anonymous wrote:
Maybe someone more knowledgeable about AU's can comment here. I have never had someone as an AU on one of my cards, nor have I ever been an AU on someone else's card. B
But when the AU account appears on your credit report, it should have (as all accounts do, AU or otherwise) a "date opened" for that account. And, on your credit report, the date opened for that charge card should be the date that your father opened it -- not the date that it was added as an AU. That's the whole point of AU accounts -- the AU gets the benefit of an account that is many years old, sometimes decades old. So the AU's credit profile becomes (apparently) many many years old, even though the profile might really only be a few months old.
Have you pulled your credit reports recently? Are you certain that the Date Opened for this AU account (as it reads on your report) is 8/2013? When the charge card appears on your father's reports, how does the Date Opened read?
Normally, yes, that's how AUs work. (Tradeline appears on AU's report just as it does on primary's report except for "Responsibility", including open date.)
But this is Amex...
Amex used to treat all tradelines for a person as part of one "account" for date opened purposes.
They also treat AUs somewhat differently than most issuers (separate card numbers, tracking spending per AU...).
As a side effect of this, it used to be possible to add an AU to an old account, creating a record with Amex for that AU, and then for the AU to establish their own tradeline, that would have the old account's date opened reported.
In years past, this resulted in oddities like a parent adding a child as an AU (sometimes granting an open date prior to the child's birth!), and then the child opening their own direct account that would also report that very old open date.
Obviously, the potential for abuse there was huge. Some years ago, Amex cut down on some of that by changing how AUs reported - now using the date that the AU was added as the open since date. (Meaning that Amex AUs now appear to report less history than most other issuers' cards.)
More recently, Amex also dropped reporting all tradelines for an individual with the oldest date opened, and new accounts are now (like most other issuers) reported with the actual date opened.
So... to sum up:
For most issuers, an AU's report will show the same open date as the account holder.
For Amex (recently), an AU's report will show the date they were added as an AU.
For Amex (in years past), a 20-something could show a 1960s open date, and carry that date forward to their own direct accounts.
(Yes, that was broken. Yes, the recent "fixes" to that means that being an Amex AU went from being far more positive to AAoA than with any other issuer, to now being less positive than with most issuers.)
EQ8:850 TU8:850 EX8:850
EQ9:847 TU9:847 EX9:839
EQ5:797 TU4:807 EX2:813 - 2021-06-06
