Can they close your unused card if it has leftover points?

[wdkwang]

Hi,

My oldest card by far is a 17 year old Amex Delta that hasn't been used in 5-10 years, however, it has leftover points from purchases and no balance. I'm led to believe companies close your card if its inactive for 1 or 2 years. Is it safe to assume that an unused card with leftover points will not be closed? I have 9 cards that i want to keep open for the sake of credit score and total credit limit, but i only have so many monthly bills i can assign to each card to show activity. Thanks.

[tcbofade]

Any creditor can close any account on any day for any reason.

If you'd like to keep the account open and usable, then USE it. 

A small purchase every few months is enough.

[simplynoir]

For this particular situation once the miles are in your Skymiles account they stay there and never expire last time I checked. So in the event AMEX closes your Delta card for non-use your miles should still be there.

[Anonymous]

But even if you don’t use it they would have to give you the rewards you accrued right? They don’t expire?

[Shadowfactor]

No credit cards don’t have to give you your points.

It clearly states for most rewards programs that points don’t expire as long as your account stays open and active and out of default.

Some companies give you 30 days to use points if the account is closed. Some do not

[longtimelurker]

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@tcbofade wrote:

Any creditor can close any account on any day for any reason.

If you'd like to keep the account open and usable, then USE it. 

A small purchase every few months is enough.

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Not always.  Sometimes they look for significant usage to justify the CL  

[SBR249]

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@longtimelurker wrote:

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@tcbofade wrote:

Any creditor can close any account on any day for any reason.

If you'd like to keep the account open and usable, then USE it. 

A small purchase every few months is enough.

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Not always.  Sometimes they look for significant usage to justify the CL  

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While that may be true, I have yet to hear of any lender straight up closing cards because you aren't putting enough spend on it. Closing cards for inactivity is not the same as CLD for lack of spend. Most lenders will do the former if your card is inactive for long enough, the lender that I hear doing the latter the most often is Capital One. 

As for the question of unused CC rewards, I believe that in the generic case of a hypothetical "CC reward program", the points (or whatever else reward scheme units) remain the property of the CC program owner until they are actually redeemed by the customer. So if you have miles, transferring or banking them to your miles account with the airline would count as a redemption. But if you have something like AmEx MR points and you leave them on the card, they are considered property of AmEx until you use them and can be revoked or withdrawn at any point before that subject to the terms of the card agreement. 

[xaximus]

Any lender can close an account based on inactivity. If a person is not using their CL and has not been for a certain period of time, they will likely close it. No point in extending credit to someone that hasn't used it in a certain period of time. I recently had Citi close one of my cards for inactivity but I was able to get it reopened. Apparently I hadn't used it for over a year and half.

My suggestion as others may have mentioned - throw on a small charge every 3 months and pay it off. You'll never have to worry about it being closed for inactivity.

[staticvoidmain]

 wrote:
My oldest card by far is a 17 year old Amex Delta that hasn't been used in 5-10 years, however, it has leftover points from purchases and no balance. I'm led to believe companies close your card if its inactive for 1 or 2 years. Is it safe to assume that an unused card with leftover points will not be closed? 

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Delta Amex miles posts to your Delta SkyMiles account at the end of each month (or 8-12 weeks after, for miles earned with flight). Technically, you should not have leftover points.

[SweetCreditObsession]

Yes, you can have your card closed by the creditor for infrequent use.