Removing 10 yr old positive closed credit accounts

[BrokeStudent2010]

Hello, 

I have a few credit cards that were closed between 2003 and 2006 that are still showing up on my credit reports.  All of the accounts were in good standing when I had them, but they were for clothing stores and I did not see the need the keep them open. I thought that cards were automatically removed after 7 to10 years, but these are still lingering despite being closed 10 - 15  years ago. If you are wonering why I want to remove them, it's because I have over 20 acounts reporting and if they don't need to be reporting, then I'd like to clean up my report to only show relevant credit accounts. Can you all recommend any tips on getting these removed? Thanks. 

[RobertEG]

Removal of closed accounts from a consumer's credit file is not governed/required under any provision of the FCRA.

It is totally an internal housecleaing determination made by each CRA for its own business purposes.

While "automatic" in the sense that the CRAs use automated reviews to identify such accounts, it is not automatic in the sense that it always occurs.

I personally have had old, closed accounts not deleted by CRAs until 15-16 years after closure, and thus know that it sometimes escapes deletion.

I would call the CRAs and advise that the accounts qualify for removal, and request they do an admin review and remove.

[BrokeStudent2010]

Robert, thanks so much for this response. I was not aware that removing 10 year old positive credit information was not a mandate under the FCRA. Good to know. Since I've only ever called the CRAs to dispute incorrect information, I wasn't sure if that was the right approach to remove correct information that is simply old and cluttering up my report. I will give calling a try and see how it goes. 

[Anonymous]

Before you do that, be sure you have thought through the implications of it.  Removing these accounts will likely lower your Average Age of Accounts, and therefore likely lower your score. Furthermore, the smaller number of total accounts you have as a result will cause your AAoA to drop much more when you do add a new account.

[Anonymous]

If any of those accounts happen to be your oldest account, that will also hurt your score.  (Age of Oldest Account is a separate scoring factor distinct from AAoA.)

[Anonymous]

I would never delete old positive accounts. They are helping your average age, thus helping your score.

[Anonymous]

Until we know what the OP's AAoA is, there isn't enough information to determine whether or not his score would drop from the AAoA drop.  If his AAoA is greater than 7 years 8 months and would still be greater than 7 years 8 months after removing any of the old accounts in question, his score wouldn't change as a result of the AAoA drop.

We'd also need to know what his current AoOA is and what it would be if he removed the accounts in question.  If he has an account older than the ones he's thinking of getting removed, his AoOA would remain unchanged.  If the accounts he is planning on getting removed do contain his oldest account, it would then depend what his next oldest account is.  For example, if his current AoOA is 16 years and removing these old accounts would drop it to 14 years, there would be no score change.  Conversely, if his oldest account would end up being 6 years after the housekeeping is complete, it could (and likely would) impact his scorecard assignment.

I personally don't see any need to "clean up" these accounts though, as they aren't doing any harm rather than presumably being unaesthetically pleasing to you.  As the others have mentioned above, keeping them in place could potentially be helping your score. 

[Anonymous]

Hey BBS.  How is it that we know that an AAoA of 30 (say) gives no scoring advantage over an AAoA of 7.666?  That may be true, but I just am not sure how we'd know that.

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure.  I'm just going off of what I've read from TT several times regarding anything over 7 years 8 months being gravy.  I trust his research 99% of the time, so I'm just assuming he's put the work in on the subject and I'm more or less just echoing his findings/belief.  If TT is around, it would be cool to hear about how he came to that determination, or from what source he took it from.

[BrokeStudent2010]

Hey, OP here. Thanks for all of your input. The accounts I would like removed are not my oldest accounts. My oldest accounts are a little over 15 years old and the average age of my accounts (AAoA) is about 7 years old. So, based off of what you all have said, it seems like my AAoA will not not be impacted by removing these positive accounts. Or if it is impacted it will not be a big hit. I'm not really concerned about the potential credit score dip because I'm not looking for credit and don't plan on looking for credit in the next 2 years. I own my home, have a low interest rate on my car, and I don't plan on opening any new credit card accounts any time soon.