Question about AU

[Anonymous]

I want to possibly add my son to my credit cards as an authorized user. They won't really even be used, it really is just so that they are hopefully able to be scored. Right now, they can't really get a phone through major providers or a car loan because they have no credit whatsoever. I am assuming this would help but maybe I am wrong? If it would help I figure I would just add them to all 4 of my cards if possible, which in this case are American Express, Capital One, Discover, and Wells Fargo. How do I go about adding them, and what happens when I do add them. Do I get a hard pull on my credit report, or do they? What is added on there report when I do add them?

[simplynoir]

For AMEX and CapOne you can add authorized users online yourself, not too sure on the other two but figure a quick phone call to customer service should take care of that. When you add them depending on the bank it may take one or two billing cycles for all 4 cards to show up on their reports. No HPs to speak of most of the time; occasionally we get an odd report or two of pulls being performed but that is few and far in between. With what it will report all of them with the exception of AMEX will backdate everything on the account like payment history, utilization, CL, and so on. AMEX no longer backdates and will be considered "open" on the day they were added on your account.

[KJinNC]

They will probably show up as "user type: authorized user," which means that anyone who looks closely (eg loan officer) will be aware that these are AU cards and not their own cards. But, it'll be calculated in FICO 8 and will probably work for what you are going for. If you call and talk to somebody, I would verify that AUs will show up on all three bureaus. Good luck!

[Anonymous]

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@simplynoir wrote:

For AMEX and CapOne you can add authorized users online yourself, not too sure on the other two but figure a quick phone call to customer service should take care of that. When you add them depending on the bank it may take one or two billing cycles for all 4 cards to show up on their reports. No HPs to speak of most of the time; occasionally we get an odd report or two of pulls being performed but that is few and far in between. With what it will report all of them with the exception of AMEX will backdate everything on the account like payment history, utilization, CL, and so on. AMEX no longer backdates and will be considered "open" on the day they were added on your account.

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Everything you said sounds good, that is exactly what I want. I am interested in the bold part above though, who gets that hard pull? Would that be me or my son?

[simplynoir]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@simplynoir wrote:

For AMEX and CapOne you can add authorized users online yourself, not too sure on the other two but figure a quick phone call to customer service should take care of that. When you add them depending on the bank it may take one or two billing cycles for all 4 cards to show up on their reports. No HPs to speak of most of the time; occasionally we get an odd report or two of pulls being performed but that is few and far in between. With what it will report all of them with the exception of AMEX will backdate everything on the account like payment history, utilization, CL, and so on. AMEX no longer backdates and will be considered "open" on the day they were added on your account.

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Everything you said sounds good, that is exactly what I want. I am interested in the bold part above though, who gets that hard pull? Would that be me or my son?

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I can't recall exactly who got the pull on the rare occasion it happened off the top of my head. If I had to take an educated guess without searching the forums for an answer it'd be the AU being added to the account. I can see if I can find the information if you would like I'm on vacation so I got the time 😂

[Anonymous]

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@simplynoir wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@simplynoir wrote:

For AMEX and CapOne you can add authorized users online yourself, not too sure on the other two but figure a quick phone call to customer service should take care of that. When you add them depending on the bank it may take one or two billing cycles for all 4 cards to show up on their reports. No HPs to speak of most of the time; occasionally we get an odd report or two of pulls being performed but that is few and far in between. With what it will report all of them with the exception of AMEX will backdate everything on the account like payment history, utilization, CL, and so on. AMEX no longer backdates and will be considered "open" on the day they were added on your account.

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Everything you said sounds good, that is exactly what I want. I am interested in the bold part above though, who gets that hard pull? Would that be me or my son?

---

I can't recall exactly who got the pull on the rare occasion it happened off the top of my head. If I had to take an educated guess without searching the forums for an answer it'd be the AU being added to the account. I can see if I can find the information if you would like I'm on vacation so I got the time 😂

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If you can find it without to much trouble I would like to know, if not don't bother looking. I simply do not want a hard pull on my credit report, I don't care if my son gets one. I hope you enjoy your vacation btw. 

[Anonymous]

I’ve never had a hard pull when adding my sons to any of my cards.

[simplynoir]

There are other topics covering but this one is the best as far as I can tell.

https://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/General-Credit-Topics/I-added-authorize-user-to-my-Amex-and-they-di...

And thanks I'm off the clock for two weeks so plan to take advantage of it.

[CreditInspired]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I want to possibly add my son to my credit cards as an authorized user. They won't really even be used, it really is just so that they are hopefully able to be scored. Right now, they can't really get a phone through major providers or a car loan because they have no credit whatsoever. I am assuming this would help but maybe I am wrong? If it would help I figure I would just add them to all 4 of my cards if possible, which in this case are American Express, Capital One, Discover, and Wells Fargo. How do I go about adding them, and what happens when I do add them. Do I get a hard pull on my credit report, or do they? What is added on there report when I do add them?

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Just a note: Please add him only to cards that have extremely low UT.

[Anonymous]

That shouldn't be an issue, as I always pay off all my cards, except for 1 at the moment. I had to put a medical expense on it a while ago but it's almost paid off, and it also is still very low utilization with that expense on there. I think that card specifically is 19% and my total is 6% almost 7%.