topic Re: Closing OLDEST Account DOES Affect your FICO Score in Understanding FICO® Scoring

Closing OLDEST Account DOES Affect your FICO Score

CA4Closure — Fri, 13 Sep 2019 04:05:18 GMT

My oldest credit card was a Capital One Platnium that I opened in November 2000. When I had a foreclosure, Capital One removed the rewards portion of this credit card and implemented a $5 monthly fee in 2011. I kept asking them to remove this fee and reinstate my rewards. I was never late with them and they responded no because of my foreclosure.

Today my FICO scores are 834, 845, 830 so I asked Capital One again to remove this $5 monthly fee and allow me to upgrade this card to a Venture card with the same interest rate of 9.9%. Their answer was no. So I asked to speak to a manager. Same line, NO!

Two weeks ago I cancelled this card. My Chase Freedom Unlimited credit score dropped from 830 to 799! My average age of account went from 18 years 10 months to 5 years. Now my oldest account, Discover It, is 5 years 7 months! My Utilization is <1% and the Capital One card only had a $6,500 credit line which has been relaced by NFCU increasing my credit line from $15,000 to $25,000!

Re: Closing OLDEST Account DOES Affect your FICO Score

Anonymous — Fri, 13 Sep 2019 04:16:39 GMT

No it doesn't.

Unless something has changed, the score you're getting from your Chase FU card is VS 3.0, not Fico. That's a meaningless and nearly irrelevant score. You referenced your Fico scores above. Why don't you pull those scores again and you'll have an apples to apples comparison. I have no doubt that your Fico scores will remain the same, as closed accounts are considered exactly the same as open accounts when it comes to AoOA. The account age drop that you're referencing is no doubt what you're seeing from the Credit Journey fluff summary page, which is just BS that has no bearing at all on the scores that the vast majority of lenders use.

I also suggest that you revise the title of your thread, as it may mislead others in the future. Perhaps closing your oldest account may impact a VS 3.0 score would be more fitting, but even that statement isn't something I can verify as being accurate or inaccurate.

Re: Closing OLDEST Account DOES Affect your FICO Score

Jnbmom — Fri, 13 Sep 2019 06:10:55 GMT

As stated above unless this is your actual FICO score, there isn’t really anything to be concerned about or analyzed🤔

Re: Closing OLDEST Account DOES Affect your FICO Score

Anonymous — Fri, 13 Sep 2019 07:05:30 GMT

First off, how did you go from AAoA of 18 years 10 months to 5 years by killing one 19 year old card? My math isn't that bad! You had to have more than one 19 year old card to have that average. And even if it were deleted it wouldn't have that effect, cuz you have to have a few cards to have that average with a 5 year old card.

Next, how did you ask for an upgrade today for a card you cancelled 2 weeks ago?

Really?

Re: Closing OLDEST Account DOES Affect your FICO Score

SouthJamaica — Fri, 13 Sep 2019 10:44:32 GMT

@CA4Closure wrote:
My oldest credit card was a Capital One Platnium that I opened in November 2000. When I had a foreclosure, Capital One removed the rewards portion of this credit card and implemented a $5 monthly fee in 2011. I kept asking them to remove this fee and reinstate my rewards. I was never late with them and they responded no because of my foreclosure.

Today my FICO scores are 834, 845, 830 so I asked Capital One again to remove this $5 monthly fee and allow me to upgrade this card to a Venture card with the same interest rate of 9.9%. Their answer was no. So I asked to speak to a manager. Same line, NO!

Two weeks ago I cancelled this card. My Chase Freedom Unlimited credit score dropped from 830 to 799! My average age of account went from 18 years 10 months to 5 years. Now my oldest account, Discover It, is 5 years 7 months! My Utilization is <1% and the Capital One card only had a $6,500 credit line which has been relaced by NFCU increasing my credit line from $15,000 to $25,000!

Closing your oldest card would have no immediate effect on your FICO scores unless the account were also removed from your credit reports, which is highly unlikely. Something is off in your description of events.

Re: Closing OLDEST Account DOES Affect your FICO Score

Anonymous — Fri, 13 Sep 2019 12:44:29 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
First off, how did you go from AAoA of 18 years 10 months to 5 years by killing one 19 year old card?

I believe that he accidentally wrote AAoA instead of AoOA (thread title) as evidenced by the fact that Chase's Credit Journey fluff summary page only displays oldest [open] account, not average age of accounts.

Re: Closing OLDEST Account DOES Affect your FICO Score

Anonymous — Fri, 13 Sep 2019 19:34:25 GMT

I'm reminded of the carpenter's credo: measure twice, cut once.

Re: Closing OLDEST Account DOES Affect your FICO Score

Anonymous — Sat, 14 Sep 2019 19:10:06 GMT

ok BBS, but how do you explain the 2nd discrepancy?

I cant upgrade something I cancelled 2 weeks prior. Just makes me wonder if this is a joke or what?

Re: Closing OLDEST Account DOES Affect your FICO Score

Anonymous — Sun, 15 Sep 2019 04:10:05 GMT

What do you mean? I don't follow you.

Re: Closing OLDEST Account DOES Affect your FICO Score

SouthJamaica — Sun, 15 Sep 2019 15:59:22 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
First off, how did you go from AAoA of 18 years 10 months to 5 years by killing one 19 year old card? My math isn't that bad! You had to have more than one 19 year old card to have that average. And even if it were deleted it wouldn't have that effect, cuz you have to have a few cards to have that average with a 5 year old card.

Next, how did you ask for an upgrade today for a card you cancelled 2 weeks ago?

Really?

We should really stop posting in this thread since OP has lost interest, but I just want to say this in response to your post @Anonymous

1. OP was probably talking about a Vantage score, which would only include open accounts in average age of accounts.

2. I think OP was saying the cancellation came after, and in response to, the denial of an upgrade.

Since this will be my last post in this thread I would like to make it clear that the OP's headline is dead wrong, and the closing of one's oldest account does not, in and of itself, affect the average age of accounts factor in FICO scores. Years down the road, it might. Even sooner than that it might, if it falls off the credit reports sooner than average. But the closing itself has no immediate effect, and the account will continue to be factored in as long as it remains in the reports.

Re: Closing OLDEST Account DOES Affect your FICO Score

Anonymous — Sun, 15 Sep 2019 21:23:08 GMT

BBS what I mean is he asked to upgrade today something he had canceled two weeks prior.

And yes I agree we should stop posting in this thread. And I assumed it was a FICO score SJ, because that’s what the title of the thread said.

Re: Closing OLDEST Account DOES Affect your FICO Score

Remedios — Mon, 16 Sep 2019 00:01:16 GMT

Just because OP lost interest, it doesn't mean that somebody else with similar question/concern will not find it useful.

Most threads are abandoned by those who started them, and if conversation stopped because of it, we'd lack about 75% of the knowledge we have around here.

Re: Closing OLDEST Account DOES Affect your FICO Score

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Sep 2019 00:59:48 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
BBS what I mean is he asked to upgrade today something he had canceled two weeks prior.

I didn't even read that part of his post. I didn't get much past the thread title, to be honest.

Re: Closing OLDEST Account DOES Affect your FICO Score

iv — Mon, 16 Sep 2019 01:50:51 GMT

@SouthJamaica wrote:
1. OP was probably talking about a Vantage score, which would only include open accounts in average age of accounts.

Just for the record, that's incorrect. Vantage includes both open and closed accounts in AAoA, just like FICO does.

(Yes, CK only shows open accounts in their front-end fluff AAoA display. CK is, as usual, wrong.)

Re: Closing OLDEST Account DOES Affect your FICO Score

SouthJamaica — Mon, 16 Sep 2019 02:21:19 GMT

@iv wrote:
@SouthJamaica wrote:
1. OP was probably talking about a Vantage score, which would only include open accounts in average age of accounts.
Just for the record, that's incorrect. Vantage includes both open and closed accounts in AAoA, just like FICO does.

(Yes, CK only shows open accounts in their front-end fluff AAoA display. CK is, as usual, wrong.)

I disagree. I have seen Vantage 3.0's calculation of my average age of accounts across various sites, and it appears to me that only the open accounts are considered in AAoA. Credit Karma's "front end" calculation of it is no different than the other sites, so I'm sure it's Vantage 3.0, not Credit Karma, that's the culprit on this one.

Re: Closing OLDEST Account DOES Affect your FICO Score

iv — Mon, 16 Sep 2019 02:48:51 GMT

@SouthJamaica wrote:
I disagree. I have seen Vantage 3.0's calculation of my average age of accounts across various sites, and it appears to me that only the open accounts are considered in AAoA. Credit Karma's "front end" calculation of it is no different than the other sites, so I'm sure it's Vantage 3.0, not Credit Karma, that's the culprit on this one.

Multiple sources of incorrect fluff are still incorrect...

How many sites with FICO scores have you also seen display incorrect AAoA stats? (Discounting AU accounts, not including closed accounts, only including certain types of accounts...)

Fluff is not an accurate representation of ANY scoring algorithm.

Also, refer to Vantage's own FAQ on the issue:

https://your.vantagescore.com/resource/81

Re: Closing OLDEST Account DOES Affect your FICO Score

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Sep 2019 04:01:35 GMT

I'm quite sure that VS 3.0 counts closed accounts in age of accounts calculations just like Fico does.

A couple of years ago my AoOOA dropped from around 15 years to 7-8 years and my AAoOA took a decent drop as well and my Vantage scores didn't budge.

Re: Closing OLDEST Account DOES Affect your FICO Score

SouthJamaica — Mon, 16 Sep 2019 11:25:31 GMT

So every single site that reports Vantage scores is wrong, and yet Vantage is not wrong?

OK, if you say so.

Re: Closing OLDEST Account DOES Affect your FICO Score

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Sep 2019 13:30:49 GMT

It’s not the score that is wrong. It’s each individual website’s separate calculation of the attributes, which have nothing to do with the execution of the algorithm on the data itself.

Neither a FICO algorithm nor a VS algorithm outputs attributes such as ages delinquencies inquires etc. etc. They input the data and the output is a score and some reason codes; that’s it, to MY knowledge. Everything else you see is a websites calculation and potentially fluff.

That’s why a creditor doesn’t just look at your score. They also look at your credit report itself, so they can see all the attributes themselves. Or they have their own software that hopefully displays and accounts for those attributes more correctly than these commercial CMS sites which are free half the time and therefore don’t have anywhere near the effort engineered into them that commercial software for financial institutions has.

Re: Closing OLDEST Account DOES Affect your FICO Score

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Sep 2019 13:38:15 GMT

As a matter of fact, for example, even a website like MF, their website has errors glitches and problems, as well. Right now they’re working on an issue for me where a hard pull is not displaying. Imagine at these free sites?

But we know most, hopefully all, financial institutions have software that has been rigorously tested and has a much higher degree of accuracy. And then again if not, maybe that accounts for some of the denials or approvals people get when they shouldn’t.