Is it possible to request a closed account to stay on CR longer than 10 years?

[Anonymous]

Hey everyone! So I opened my first credit card ten years ago when I was 18. 3 years after that, I got into some trouble with the economy hitting, lost my job, and all of my credit cards went to collections. I had opened a Car Toys credit card in 2006 and they automatically closed it in 2007 because I didn't use it. That's the only saving grace I have for my average age of accounts and history. All of my other accounts are dropping off right now because they were in collections, and eventually charged off in bankruptcy. Have you ever heard of successfully asking the credit bureaus to keep old accounts on your record longer than 10 years? Thank You :-)

[gdale6]

Never heard of this one being done, they remove them to free up data space if everything from all time on the positive side were to stay around it would require a huge amount of data storage.

[RobertEG]

They are well aware of the negative impact on consumers in their average age of accounts scoring by the subjective deletion of old accounts, but obviously do not rank consumers as customers deserving of that consideration.

They are concerned with their own housecleaing/database needs.

[takeshi74]

Nope.  Length of Credit History is typically ~15%.  It's not the only factor that matters and you'll rebuild it with time and responsible management.

[Anonymous]

Does anyone know how long the "ten year" policy has been in effect? 

I realize that it is not law, and that sometimes positive closed accounts can be removed earlier (or later) than ten years.  But it seems like in general the three CRAs will tend to remove any particular positive account roughly ten years after it closes.

Has this policy been largely true for a long time?  For example, was it true that accounts closed (say) 1992 were staying on people's reports till at least 2002?

[RobertEG]

I am not aware of the specific date that the CRAs decided to delete the old accounts, but it has been standard for at least the last decade that I have been following credit reporting.

Consider the millions and millions of reportings in only one year, and the database requirments to store all that info is staggering.

Credit inquiries, for example, are so prolific that the CRAs ditch them at approx 2 years.

[Anonymous]

I am wondering, Robert, whether storage cost is really the sole or even primary driver of the policy today.  If it were, we'd find that in earlier times (when storage was vastly more expensive) that CRAs would have dropped closed accounts far sooner.  Just a short while ago hard drives where measured in the megabytes, and now budget PCs come with terrabyte sized hard drives.

[RobertEG]

Yes, I agree that database cost is not the only factor.

The CRAs want to present accurate credit histories to their customers at least until the statutory credit report exclusion period for adverse items reported to them has expired, as also demonstrated by their oppostion to granting of PFDs. 

The credit report exclusion periods generally run from 7 to ten years, and thus CRAs are highly unlikely to delete earlier than 7 years, but after 10 years, all adverse info (except for possibly unpaid tax liens or unpaid civil judgments) will have become excluded, making thier reports inherently incomplete as to full credit histories.

The ten year deltion policy is thus based in part on the fact that most, if not all, relevant payment history information will have become excluded from their normal credit reports after ten years.

[Anonymous]

Very interesting!  Thanks.

It may be the case that on the whole the 10-year drop policy can work to the benefit of people who haven't been using credit long.  If the CRAs kept all positive closed accounts for the last 30 years, then FICO might well consider an 8 year old profile to still be fairly young.  As it is, they have to consider the fact that just because a person's oldest account on his report is 8 years doesn't mean he hasn't been using credit for decades -- it could be that he has but his old accounts have fallen off recently.  My 80 year old father is a good example of that: I helped him pull his reports over Christmas and his oldest account was 8-9 years old.

[StartingOver10]

Shhhsh...don't say anything, but I have one that has been reporting since 1998. However, most delete after 10 years. Lost a bunch recently due to the 10 year mark (10 years after closing and/or refinancing).  It is a shame because I think it skews the credit history IMO.