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Effect of no usage??

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Anonymous
Not applicable

Effect of no usage??

What effect on CR does no usage have?? I see this mainly with Comenity store cards, where they only update CR with usage. If there is a $0 balance it will not update to CR. What effect does this have on overall reporting??
Message 1 of 6
5 REPLIES 5
CreditMagic7
Mega Contributor

Re: Effect of no usage??


@Anonymous wrote:
What effect on CR does no usage have?? I see this mainly with Comenity store cards, where they only update CR with usage. If there is a $0 balance it will not update to CR. What effect does this have on overall reporting??

With Comenity i don't believe (guessing here) there are any (even marginal) affects. On my reports where i regularly obtain them to comb over every lender and every detail it's a gripe of mine that Comenity reporting practices continue to fall woefully short of every other lender in that respect.

Whether they realize it or not, it soon (with some of us anyway) reaches a point where it encourages you to SD those cards that they continue to do that on in spite of it and in turn drives a desire to eventually close those cards (with that lack of regular reporting practice).

 

Cardholders (those in the know anyway) eventually turn to other lenders to make spend with that DO regularly report.

Message 2 of 6
Revelate
Moderator Emeritus

Re: Effect of no usage??

It's not a big deal.  I never noticed fluctuations in my FICO scores as a result of Synchrony doing precisely this: not generating a statement and therefore not reporting unless there was a balance.

 

If it's ND (no data) you still get the pretty OK later when it next reports.  I've gone a year without using my Wally card, and it still looks like any other tradeline now from a FICO perspective.

 

To be fair if you have like no other tradelines besides these cards, and you don't have any activity in the last six months, then you might temporarily lose your FICO score altogether until you get another trigger, but this is such a ridiculous corner case that it's not a big deal as everyone should have at a non-store card tradeline somewhere on their report.

 

It's possible though on more of an edge case scenario that if the bulk of your tradelines were inactive by the six month rule, they might not get counted and suddenly you might get some impact from having very little reporting or maybe your ratio of non-zero balances getting non-trivially out of whack as a result... though with my having at least 4 cards in addition to the Wally card, it wasn't even a rounding error.  There's some other esoteric issues but it's simple: just go get a credit card from a bank or your local CU and go on with life.




        
Message 3 of 6
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Effect of no usage??


@CreditMagic7 wrote:

@Anonymous wrote:
What effect on CR does no usage have?? I see this mainly with Comenity store cards, where they only update CR with usage. If there is a $0 balance it will not update to CR. What effect does this have on overall reporting??

With Comenity i don't believe (guessing here) there are any (even marginal) affects. On my reports where i regularly obtain them to comb over every lender and every detail it's a gripe of mine that Comenity reporting practices continue to fall woefully short of every other lender in that respect.

Whether they realize it or not, it soon (with some of us anyway) reaches a point where it encourages you to SD those cards that they continue to do that on in spite of it and in turn drives a desire to eventually close those cards (with that lack of regular reporting practice).

 

Cardholders (those in the know anyway) eventually turn to other lenders to make spend with that DO regularly report.


Exactly! With the not being competive on many other levels, you would think at least this would be consistent.

 

Message 4 of 6
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Effect of no usage??


@Revelate wrote:

It's not a big deal.  I never noticed fluctuations in my FICO scores as a result of Synchrony doing precisely this: not generating a statement and therefore not reporting unless there was a balance.

 

If it's ND (no data) you still get the pretty OK later when it next reports.  I've gone a year without using my Wally card, and it still looks like any other tradeline now from a FICO perspective.

 

To be fair if you have like no other tradelines besides these cards, and you don't have any activity in the last six months, then you might temporarily lose your FICO score altogether until you get another trigger, but this is such a ridiculous corner case that it's not a big deal as everyone should have at a non-store card tradeline somewhere on their report.

 

It's possible though on more of an edge case scenario that if the bulk of your tradelines were inactive by the six month rule, they might not get counted and suddenly you might get some impact from having very little reporting or maybe your ratio of non-zero balances getting non-trivially out of whack as a result... though with my having at least 4 cards in addition to the Wally card, it wasn't even a rounding error.  There's some other esoteric issues but it's simple: just go get a credit card from a bank or your local CU and go on with life.


Good points and totally agree. If you have diversity in overall profile this should have little effect. I have not seen any direct effect on my profile. But as you stated it would be interesting to know, if someone with these TLs only, would feel the effect.

Message 5 of 6
takeshi74
Senior Contributor

Re: Effect of no usage??

Doesn't really matter.  There are definitely bigger known factors if you want to worry.

http://www.myfico.com/crediteducation/whatsinyourscore.aspx

 


@Anonymous wrote:

Exactly! With the not being competive on many other levels, you would think at least this would be consistent.


Don't conflate you and I.  I wouldn't assume such a thing as one has nothing to do with the other.

Message 6 of 6
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