How many accounts enough to build credit?

[MarkyB]

@Anonymalous So far both my disco and cap1 have operated the same. If I make a charge anytime up to 1 day before statement close day, it gets reported on that statement. Charges made on the same day of statement close day roll over to the next statement. I never purchased gas where they only authorize $1 but for store and online purchases that evidently seems to be the case. I will try a gas charge next month cuz that's an interesting point.

[Horseshoez]

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@MarkyB wrote:

@Anonymalous So far both my disco and cap1 have operated the same. If I make a charge anytime up to 1 day before statement close day, it gets reported on that statement. Charges made on the same day of statement close day roll over to the next statement. I never purchased gas where they only authorize $1 but for store and online purchases that evidently seems to be the case. I will try a gas charge next month cuz that's an interesting point.

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I don't have a Discover card, but both of my CapOne cards can take up to three days for a charge to report on my statement.

[Anonymalous]

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@MarkyB wrote:

@Anonymalous So far both my disco and cap1 have operated the same. If I make a charge anytime up to 1 day before statement close day, it gets reported on that statement. Charges made on the same day of statement close day roll over to the next statement. I never purchased gas where they only authorize $1 but for store and online purchases that evidently seems to be the case. I will try a gas charge next month cuz that's an interesting point.

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I had to dig back a bit to when I was using my Quicksilver for everday spend (these days I just use it for some monthly bills, all of which fall in the middle of the billing cycle), but I had a charge that was pending the day my statement ended, but didn't post until the first day of the next billing cycle. On the statement, the transaction date is a day before the start of the statement.

[Anonymalous]

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@Horseshoez wrote:

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@MarkyB wrote:

@Anonymalous So far both my disco and cap1 have operated the same. If I make a charge anytime up to 1 day before statement close day, it gets reported on that statement. Charges made on the same day of statement close day roll over to the next statement. I never purchased gas where they only authorize $1 but for store and online purchases that evidently seems to be the case. I will try a gas charge next month cuz that's an interesting point.

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I don't have a Discover card, but both of my CapOne cards can take up to three days for a charge to report on my statement.

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The absolute weirdest charge I've seen was a Walmart.com purchase where the charge was pending for 5 days, and then just vanished. I called Cap1 to ask what happened, and they told me to call Walmart. I didn't, but the charge reappeared later the same day as a new newly posted transaction, and then posted the next day. So in the system it looks like a charge that took 1 day to post, but in reality it was 6 days. Apparently Walmart waited so long to submit the charge that the charge was removed from the system, and they had to resubmit or reactive it or something like that (that last sentence might be slightly incorrect, because I'm not entirely sure how batch processing works).

This was only a couple months after I got my first credit card, so I was watching everything like a hawk, and took notes. So this is what I documented at the time, not some imprecise memory. It was very much an outlier -- I've never seen anything like this happen again, on any of my cards.

[MarkyB]

@Anonymalous interesting. I guess it's different for some? That's actually why my cap1 reported a balance last month which caused my EQ score to drop 19 points. I had made a purchase the day before statement ended and it got reported. I found it unusual since it normally takes 3 days for a charge to post on a normal basis. That's when I tested it with my disco card this month and got the same results. The $10 purchase made the day before got reported while the $160 purchase made on the same day as statement ended didn't get reported.

[Anonymalous]

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@MarkyB wrote:

@Anonymalous interesting. I guess it's different for some? That's actually why my cap1 reported a balance last month which caused my EQ score to drop 19 points. I had made a purchase the day before statement ended and it got reported. I found it unusual since it normally takes 3 days for a charge to post on a normal basis. That's when I tested it with my disco card this month and got the same results. The $10 purchase made the day before got reported while the $160 purchase made on the same day as statement ended didn't get reported.

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It gets a little complicated. When you see a pending charge, it's just an authorization. They put a hold on the money (your CL gets reduced), but the merchant hasn't been paid yet. When Cap1 (or whatever) pays the merchant, that's when it posts, and it shows up as your balance due. The process is usually fairly quick these days, but it's also typically only done during regular business hours, so there can be delays over weekends or holidays.

But it's also not entirely up to the card issuer. There are also preauthorizations, where a merchant basically puts a hold on a certain amount, and then finalizes it later with the real amount. This was very common with restaurants, before they started bringing those machines to the table. In those days, the server would take your card, swipe it for the cost of the meal, and then bring a receipt back for you to sign and add a tip. They'd later process all the receipts, adding the tips, and finalizing the charges. This usually happened at night, though sometimes it took a couple days. Small mom & pop vendors sometimes took longer.

Other examples are the holds placed by gas stations and hotels, those $1 pending charges that appear and then vanish when you sign up for a free trial that requires you to enter a credit card (they weren't charging you anything but they needed to send through something to ensure your card is real and valid, so they did a preauthorization for a token amount and just let it lapse), and so on.

[MarkyB]

@Anonymalous Yea I understand the process. In fact, the $160 charge I made the same day as the statement end day, that charge was completed on the merchant end a couple of hours later around 12pm noon eastern time on the same day. I was totally expecting it to report on the statement but it didn't. However, the $10 charge I made the night before at a deli, got reported.

[MarkyB]

Well, my Self account has been removed off my Equifax report today, yet again. Not sure what's going on.

[RobynJ]

**bleep** you have had 0 luck with self, I would be furious. 

[MarkyB]

@RobynJ I spoke with Self last night and they replied saying,

"A processing error occurred when updating your Equifax credit report and the account was inadvertently removed. This has now been fixed and the account reinstated on that bureau."

So I explained to them that the account had reappeared but then was removed again 2 days later. They said,

"We understand. Again, we apologize for this inconvenience. This is still part of the update process. We would recommend to please allow it a few more days for these processes to complete after which the account should be reinstated properly on that bureau."

So all I can do is wait and see if it comes back.