Closed Account Dropped Scores 17 Points

[Schwartzinator]

Hey all, 

I recieved notification of an account removed from my report this afternoon, and was surprised to see that there was a 17 point drop on Experian from 758 down to 741. The account in question, was an American Express Platinum card I closed near the end of April, with a $450 balance reported (it was the annual fee I didn't want to renew). Before the close of the account, Credit Karma and Wallethub had my AAoA at 1yr11mo, it now sits at 2yr3mo. Utilization is all but nonexistent at $72/$37,000. Any ideas?

Thanks

[Anonymous]

Well the AAoA really hasn't changed at all. Those stats you are quoting are peculiarities in the way those websites calculate the age by throwing away the closed account age. FICO and VS don't calculate it that way, so nothing has changed there.

If I were guessing, I would say that your account mix took a hit due to the loss of a card in the "other" category; you are now left with only revolvers, no NPSLs.

You'll have to pry my Platinum from my cold dead fingers...

[Anonymous]

---

@Schwartzinator wrote:

I recieved notification of an account removed from my report this afternoon....

---

Can you confirm for us that the account was (as you say) deleted from the report itself?  I.e. if you look at your EQ and TU reports tonight, the account no longer appears anywhere on them, even as a closed account?

If so, then it is quite possible that the (strange) deletion caused a drop.  We'd need to know how old that account was, the number of open accounts that appear on your reports now and the number of closed.

Possible issues might have been a drop in Age of Oldest Account, Average Age of Accounts, and possibly being placed into a new scorecard for people with a small number of accounts.  Also possible is losing some credit mix benefit that a charge card might give, though that benefit is highly conjectural.