Do credit cards report monthly if you don't use them?

[haulingthescoreup]

My bank cards report monthly, and all my store cards, except sometimes J.Crew doesn't update.

Do you have two recurring bills (cell phone, etc) you could put on the BofA and Cap1? It would be a shame for them to be closed down for non-usage. And this does happen.

[haulingthescoreup]

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jhtrico1850 wrote:

hauling, do your cards besides J Crew report, even though some of them you don't touch, or do you touch all of them so you can't tell?

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Yes, I'm sorry, I meant to include that in my post. They all report (so far), even if they didn't get used that month. I do think that if I just ignored them for 6 months or something, they might stop reporting, but these days, they'd probably close them before it got that far!

I've gone 4-6 months on Home Depot (Citi) and Best Buy (HSBC) store cards without a purchase, and they keep updating with the $0. I did just go air them out to make sure that they don't think I've died or something. And no problem with the bank cards, either, although they don't go that long without being used.


eta: Even when I use them during the month, though, I always have them report $0, except that there's always at least one where I miss some $4.13 last-minute charge, so that takes care of the one-card-reporting-a-balance thing.

Message Edited by haulingthescoreup on 06-05-2009 09:40 AM

[Anonymous]

Mine all report monthly whether used or not.

Most interesting trade line I have relating to this topic is JC Penny. I opened the card 18 years ago, used it once, then pretty much forgot about it.  Fast forward 13 years after opening this card and 13 years after the only charge ever on it. During tis time I  went through a dismissed BK during which I lost all other credit lines. Checked my credit reports for the first time ever and there it was...this 13 yr old (at the time) credit card, reporting 0 balance month after month for all those years.

I can't imagine why this happened and don't believe it would happen in towards credit crunch, but it was a life saver for my credit.