Authorized User Status Negatively Impacting Score

[Anonymous]

I just discovered that my mother listed me as an "authorized user" on 4 credit card accounts. I had no idea she did this.

It turns out her late payments have negatively impacted my credit score. I obviously will be having a serious talk with her.

Anyway, in order to remedy the situation, I would like to report these accounts as not mine. Will this remove them? Or must she directly request her cc companies to remove me?

Any input is greatly appreciated.

Thanks! 

[llecs]

Welcome to the forums!

Dispute as "not mine" as you are not the account holder, she is. Just remember, doing so could erase history and effect utilization. On the flip side, no more lates.

[jackg]

I had a similiar situation with my wife's credit card at WAMU so I told her to call them and request my name be removed as an AU. IN 4-5 weeks it was completely gone from my CR.

[Anonymous]

Good to know....I will have to do the same. Thanks!

[Anonymous]

I'm curious as to how'd you find out about this? Have you been a subscriber to a credit monitoring service and never got any alerts of these new accts, or did you recently subscribe to one, or even applied for a loan of some sort and found out that way? Either way, it's fixable. And be gentle, afterall it is your mom, I'm sure she had good intentions.

[llecs]

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brownfox79 wrote:
I'm curious as to how'd you find out about this? Have you been a subscriber to a credit monitoring service and never got any alerts of these new accts, or did you recently subscribe to one, or even applied for a loan of some sort and found out that way? Either way, it's fixable. And be gentle, afterall it is your mom, I'm sure she had good intentions.

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I can't speak to OP, but I started repair for DW and myself a couple years ago. We had zero clue as to what was reporting and hadn't pulled out reports in years. We were living off cash-only for about 7-8 yrs and had no debt other than a car note (and gobs of CA debt). It wasn't until I applied for a CC, and was denied, that I took interest in my CRs. One thing we learned was that DW had all of these good CC accounts on her CR. They were all maxed out, but reporting OK otherwise with no lates. Like OP, we later learned that her father added her as an AU without telling her. As you mentioned, it was all with good intentions to help her credit in the future.

[Anonymous]

Yes, I hadn't checked my score in a couple of years and recently subscribed to a service - that's how I found out. My mother did have good intentions - to help build my up my credit, and the late payments were during her divorce. She had  honestly forgotten she had me as a au on those cards.

But not sure that I will remove all of them, since I know length of credit history impacts your score as well. Need to weigh this out a little more. Appreciate all of the responses!

[llecs]

In our case, it was one card with a $6300 CL with a $6200 balance on it. DW's util, at best with the cards she had, could only get to 90%. It weighed so heavily on utilization. It was also her second oldest TL. Well, we disputed to get it removed and her score dropped about 20 points. The damage could have been worse, but her AAoA dropped from 6 yrs to 3 yrs. You'd really think that utilization at nearly 100% would be a bigger impact, but that AAoA really was the decider there.