Does closing an account help score

[bobbay]

I have read many times that some lenders do not like to see sub prime cards like FP, Creditone, Merrick.  Is this true?  Also I have read that after closing cards like this people saw a score bump?  This does not make sense to me.  Is this true or urban myth?

If so should I close Credit One and Express and look to prune or do I wait minimum of 12 or 24 months before closing an account to get the full positive benefits of account reporting before closure?

[gen-specific]

closing does not help the score

having a bunch of whack store cards has nothing to do with the score, but may affect how lenders view you. they are not even obligated to use the score itself, so you have to think about what would make you an attractive person to lend to (but of course, this will usually lead to a higher score)

[HiLine]

Let's just say that closing an account never helps a FICO credit score.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

[Anonymous]

---

@bobbay wrote:

I have read many times that some lenders do not like to see sub prime cards like FP, Creditone, Merrick.  Is this true?  Also I have read that after closing cards like this people saw a score bump?  This does not make sense to me.  Is this true or urban myth?

If so should I close Credit One and Express and look to prune or do I wait minimum of 12 or 24 months before closing an account to get the full positive benefits of account reporting before closure?

---

Closing accounts may help you in specific situations, for example with manual underwriting, but it doesn't improve your score.

If closing an account causes your utilization to bump up, it may hurt your score.

[cflowers0115]

---

@HiLine wrote:

Let's just say that closing an account never helps a FICO credit score.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

---

Help the FICO Credit Score? No.. but it can help financially if you're getting charged excessively high annual fees.

That's basically been the only time I've closed anything. Merrick was unwilling to adjust their annual fee ($7 per month) and I was unwilling to pay them anything, let alone a fee into perpetuity, to have access to $900 I never used.