topic Re: Deleting old accounts in Understanding FICO® Scoring

Deleting old accounts

Anonymous — Mon, 19 May 2008 20:26:33 GMT

Hi, is it a good idea to delete old accounts from my record? I have a few accounts more than seven years old and I was wondering if I should request them to be removed..

Re: Deleting old accounts

fused — Mon, 19 May 2008 20:43:35 GMT

Are these accounts in good standing?

Re: Deleting old accounts

marty56 — Mon, 19 May 2008 20:50:57 GMT

I had a good account get closed by the CCC and it droped my EX score 16 points because of goping from bellow 10% util to 10% util. Just got those points back. Cost me over 2 grand though

Re: Deleting old accounts

RobertEG — Tue, 20 May 2008 01:09:25 GMT

froops, I have never tried to get an account "deleted" from my credit report, and have no idea why you would want to do this, or if the CRA would even consider it. Most people are concerned with just the opposiite.. they dont want accounts deleted in order to preserve their lenght of credit in their avg credit age calcualtion.

Current pratice of the CRAs seems to be that an account will remain on your CR for up to ten years after you close that account.. During the time that the account is still on your CR, it adds to lenght of credit. You dont want to lose that.

The only reason I could see for wanting to delete an account is to get rid of derogs reporting on that account. If deleting accounts from a CR was possible, then many people would seek to delete accounts showing derogs under 7 years, thus eliminating their impact on credit history. I have never heard of a CRA consenting to this.

Re: Deleting old accounts

Anonymous — Tue, 20 May 2008 02:02:40 GMT

Keep em if not negative accounts. Your score is based on your history. If you delete your history your score goes down. More positive accounts and older is better.

Re: Deleting old accounts

RobertEG — Tue, 20 May 2008 02:24:17 GMT

The tone underlying the posted comments is to keep them if they are in good standing... That is clearly sound advice.

But that begs the question... does this imply that if an account is not in good standing, or has prior derogs, that one can or should try to delete the account?

I have never heard of a CRA agreeing to delete an account from one's CR because the consumer requested it. ??????

Re: Deleting old accounts

RobertEG — Tue, 20 May 2008 06:01:30 GMT

A closed account with no balances (account closed in good standing) is NO different in FICO scoring than an open account, except that you lose the CL on an account once it is closed. That only hurts %util. No reason at all to close an account in good standing, ever, unless you are paying a monthly fee for the accoount that you dont want to pay, or are concerned about losing its age history ten years from now.

Re: Deleting old accounts

Anonymous — Tue, 20 May 2008 14:02:20 GMT

Thank you for replying. I was inquiring about old accounts but in good standing. I thought that having too many old accounts, although closed, could affect my CR. However, it makes sense what you said about the credit length. I guess I won't worry about them if they are old, but in good standing.

Thank-you all.