20 year credit history missing on Equifax

[Anonymous]

About 6 years ago, I closed out all my credit cards and credit accounts, wanting to live a simpler, less attached, life.  Now I realize that may have been a mistake, since credit history is now used to measure personal worth and in some situations, job qualifications.  With that concern, I recently applied for a credit card.  I was surprised to learn that I was declined.  They said that Equifax could not give a report, for lack of credit history.  I obtained credit reports from all my agencies and the missing Equifax history was confirmed. I've saved the best for last; despite no credit history, Equifax gives me a credit score of 769.

To put things into perspective, over the past 20 years, I've paid up two mortgages, a truck, an equity line, my student loans, and about eleven revolving accounts. I've never been late on payments or defaulted on any of this. I have two respectable savings accounts and have no debts.  I currently hold a university position and have been fully employed with them for over 20 years.  

At this point, I'm not sure what to do.  Can a reporting agency wipe out one's credit history, simply because one has no open accounts? 

[Booner72]

Hi, Atomicdogs!  Congrats on your first post.

Where did you get that Equifax score?

Your equifax report is completely blank?  There is nothing reporting at all?

[pizzadude]

The short answer is Yes, they can. The CRAs will only show your accounts for 10 years from the point that they are closed. Also I believe that FICO won't show a score if you have no open accounts reporting for a certain period of time.

[Imhotrodcrazy]

I opened two accounts back in 1998 and I closed them out in 2005.  Both of these accounts were dropped by EQ last month after only 7 yrs. 

[Anonymous]

I got my reports from free score. It shows all the credit score numbers but there is no history under equifax.  There is history under the other two. I guess I'm a little surprised that the credit formula doesn't care whether a person has been responsible for most of his life, only the most recent of it.  However, I'm still wondering if there isn't some kind of glitch with equifax. In my case, it probably doesn't matter. I just hate being treated like a bad credit risk, when I have a long and proven track record.

[RobertEG]

The CRA practice of deletion of "old" accounts at a period of time after closing the account is totally unregulated under the FCRA.

It is an internal policy on their part, and thus has no actual regulated period after account closure.

The CRAs will almost invariably keep a closed account on file for at least 7 years, in order to ensure that any old adverse item of information that may have been reported on the account has passed all of the major credit report exclusion periods.  After issues of adverse effects have gone, they can argue that it is unnecessary to retain information that they cannot include in their credit reports.  The longest CR exclusion period, i.e. a BK, has a period of 10 years, so I suspect that is the basis for the "arbitrary" period of 10 years.

Getting close to a million or so items reported each day, one can certainly understand some need to purge their files.  However, I share your concern about both the arbitrariness of this practice, and the relatively short time period they sometimes use.  CRA convenience is not the only issue.  They exist to correctly represent consumer credit history.  The earlier the deletion of trade lines, the less info is availble to credtiors.  Additionally, their practice ignores, apparently with no concern, the clear impact on conxumer credit scoring by the deletion of the oldest TLs from both the oldest and average age of accounts calculations.

Due to the lack of regulation, the CRAs win the battle. There is no provision of the FCRA upon which to dispute their deletion.

[LS2982]

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@Anonymous wrote:

About 6 years ago, I closed out all my credit cards and credit accounts, wanting to live a simpler, less attached, life.  Now I realize that may have been a mistake, since credit history is now used to measure personal worth and in some situations, job qualifications.  With that concern, I recently applied for a credit card.  I was surprised to learn that I was declined.  They said that Equifax could not give a report, for lack of credit history.  I obtained credit reports from all my agencies and the missing Equifax history was confirmed. I've saved the best for last; despite no credit history, Equifax gives me a credit score of 769.

To put things into perspective, over the past 20 years, I've paid up two mortgages, a truck, an equity line, my student loans, and about eleven revolving accounts. I've never been late on payments or defaulted on any of this. I have two respectable savings accounts and have no debts.  I currently hold a university position and have been fully employed with them for over 20 years.  

At this point, I'm not sure what to do.  Can a reporting agency wipe out one's credit history, simply because one has no open accounts? 

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Once these accounts are closed they remain on your report for 10 years. Fro mthere, the CRA ca ndelete them if they wish.