Lenders can reopen accounts with no hit to your credit. Whether sync will do it is another story. The reason for closure is also important. If they closed it in error, it should be no problem most of the time. In your case, non-use is not their fault. You can ask, but you run the risk of them pulling your credit if they even humor the request at all. Like everything else credit you just need to decide if it's worth rolling the dice to lower your aggregate utilization.
@bluedog357 wrote:Ok, 2 questions:
1) if they agree to reopen the account than am I correct in assuming that a report of "account closed" followed very quickly (span of a couple weeks) "account reopend" will have zero effect on current score.
2) if they do not agree to reopen the account, and I take what was the credit limit of the account (1750) and pay that amount on my discover card (thus lowering the discover cards balance by 1750) than since the new utl would be the same as the utl if O still had the synchrony card than there should be zero effect on my credit score (same utl but just one less card). Is this correct?
1) if they did it properly there wouldn't be a record of it being closed. You'd retain your opening date and age. Your report would show "NR" for the months the card was closed. If they made notes, you would ask to have them deleted as lenders could look at the notes during a manual review. You would have to answer as to why the account was closed and reopened.
2) That depends. Without the closed card your utilization would be about 48%. With the card, it's 38%. If you reach that same utilization your scores could go back to where they were, BUT, one of the bureaus scores on percentage of cards carrying a balance. Can't remember which. You basically went from 33.33% of cards with balance to 50%, which would be a score hit. Don't know what kind of hit as it's probably profile dependant, we just have datapoints it exists.
