My CK shows that I had a 25yo account drop off my credit report this month. It was an old local bank CLOC that was closed around 2004 when the bank was purchased by another local bank. So even though the account was officially closed 15 years ago, it showed that it was last reported in May 2009 (right at 10 years ago). I'm not sure why it was reported 5 years after it had closed, but it artificially boosted the age of my oldest account.
That got me wondering if there is a way to have a bank report an old, closed account so that the 10 year resets? Is it possible?
Could just calling the bank and making an inquiry of the account trigger a reporting cycle?
@Anonymous wrote:Karma gives a lot of detailed date fields, among which are DATE REPORTED and DATE CLOSED. How exactly does each field read for this account?
Anything else interesting about this account? Was there a positive balance that might not have been cleared until 2008 or 2009?
Did all three CRAs (including Experian) keep the account on the reports 14+ years after it was closed?
I have wondered the same thing as you. The received wisdom is that the CRAs delete accounts at the ten year mark based off of the Date Closed, but I have wondered whether some or all of the Big Three CRAs might go by Date Reported if that is later -- and whether that could explain why some accounts stay on reports for far longer than ten years after they are closed.
On a practical note, my closed mortgages will fall off my reports in roughly June of next year. And I have wondered off and on for the last couple years whether there might be a clever way to induce the creditor to update the Date Reported just in case that could keep my mortgages on longer.
Nothing odd or unusual about the account, other than going through a transfer from one bank to another (more like a few branches transferred to another bank as both banks still exist). Maybe the housing crisis caused some reshuffling or reorganization in 2009 that caused it to be reported again.
The account only appeared on EQ, but it was a joint account and appeared on both mine and DW EQ accounts.
There may have been a balance on it that kept it alive, but no payment history is shown. Frankly, I can't remember much about this account as old as it is.
I have another older account (a credit card account) that was closed in 2012 due to BK even though there was no balance on it at the time. It was reported 4 years later in 2016. This account still appears on at least EQ and TU (and probably EX as well). There was truly no balance on this account after 2012, so I have no idea why the reporting occurred.
@Anonymous wrote:It sounds like this account appears only on your EQ report. On the report itself, how do the DATE REPORTED and DATE CLOSED fields read? What are the dates listed?
When you say that this account appears on EQ, do you know whether this account never appeared on EX and TU, even while it was open? Is it possible, for example, that the account appeared on the other bureaus, and continued to appear on all three after it was closed, but that TU and EX correctly dropped the account at roughly ten years after closure?
PS. I notice that elsewhere in your response you write about another account, and use the word "probably" to describe what your Experian report might say. I am guessing that you do not have any tool that gives you free monthly Experian reports. If you don't, I'd get one. It's not good to have to guess what any report looks like.
I use Experian's site for Experian stuff. I'm actually in my 1 week eval trial for the CCW (or whatever it's called) at this time (recently app'd for a couple of CC last week and used CCW to get a "before" and "after").
CK showed a date closed of 2004 and then a date reported of 2009. CCW doesn't show the close date like CK did for the original account that just dropped off. CCW only has this account on EQ, and it shows a 2009 date in both of the "updated" fields.
The other account I mentioned that still shows on my CK TU and EQ reports has a date closed of 2012 but a last reported date of 2016. For EX, I'm looking at the 3-bureau report that occurred last week when I started my eval of CCW. The EX CCW reports for all 3 doesn't explicitly show a "date closed" field. The reports show "Status Updated" and "Balance Updated" fields. The EX report shows both of those fields with a 2012 date, while TU and EQ reports show a 2016 date in both fields. So it looks like the creditor reported only to TU and EQ in 2016 (or EX ignored it?).
I don't have access to my super old credit reports at this time, maybe can check later.
But I do have some historical CK data that I seems to shed some light.
The EQ reports from CK show duplicated accounts for the original bank and the bank that acquired the branch I used. Both of these accounts show the same original open date/credit line amount/etc. But the original bank had an earlier closed date (naturally). The account from the original bank dropped off years ago, but the new bank's account stuck around until this month.
The TU reports only show the original bank's account, not the new bank's account. Evidently, the new bank only reported to EQ.