No credit card required
Browse credit cards from a variety of issuers to see if there's a better card for you.
Just updated my reports. I was rather underwhelmed. I had recently updated them in the beginning of January with scores of TU 776 and EQ 764. This morning I was expecting sizeable increases....perhaps 790s to maybe over 800 on TU and 770s or better on my EQ in light of a concerted effort to show a lower utlilization from 5% to 1-2% through lower absolute balances as well as an $3500 increase in one of my card limits....besides the passage of some time.
Well, my TU went up to 785. Higher, yes but I was expecting higher. EQ actually dropped 2 points to 762. I looked over the reports and saw that my total accounts had dropped by 1 on both. ah-HA. An old satisfactory loan from my local bank that existed from 2000-2003 was gone. Strange. I have closed accounts that are much older and still listed.
I am not sure how many points this has cost me but it clearly has had an effect. My current EQ report, for example, is superior in every way imaginable to my older one from a month ago....except that it has one less closed account. By association, this also tells me that my instincts were probably right in expecting a much higher score on TU.
Has anyone ever had luck in asking a creditor (especially a local bank) to relist a closed account upon request? I don't really know what's involved for the creditor. Does it cost them money to report accounts to the bureaus?
Yes it costs them money to report. And the chances of success in getting them to report an account closed ten years ago are nearly nil. I would say absolute zero but someone somewhere may have had it happen once. The credit bureaus will normally delete any old accounts at approximately 10 years after closure as a matter of housekeeping. Administratively this is because the time frame for any legal issues regarding account reporting is past. If you have accounts that are more than ten years past closure and still reporting then just quietly step away and let them be. Old accounts in good standing are certainly helping out.
By the way, your scores are already stellar and will get you the best rates on any credit product. Beyond about 760+ all we are doing is looking for bragging rights within a community of credit score geeks.
Thanks for the info.
Yeah, I know old closed accounts can easily fall off after a certain amount of time. That being said, I have accounts from 90s still propping up my AAoA so it's still a little disappointing when more recent ones fall off. Oh well. And yes, at this point, it's just a game to see if I can hit 800 at some point. I have been there in the days before the accounts fell off....I'll never know.......
It's very possible that your creditors are still reporting this account, but the CRAs are just excluding it based on their ~10 year rule.
CRAs have their own guidelines for dropping old accounts, and as you described, there are inconsistancies unfortunately.