cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

My oldest accounts and what to do with them.

tag
ReturnOfTheCredi
Contributor

My oldest accounts and what to do with them.

I was looking over my Credit Karma profile this morning and noticed something that had never stood out before on the Transunion report:  One of my credit card accounts is showing as "Past Due, May Need Attention."  In fact, the account in question is showing a balance of 0.00 and has not been past due in a LONG time. 

 

I filed for CH. 7 BK in 2012 following the unexpected loss of my job.  The card now causing a "past due" flag was a Discover card with a 500.00 limit and it was included in that BK.  Oddly enough, it continued to show over the years with no balance and as active, making it my oldest account since essentially starting over with a history spanning nearly 10 years.  For that reason, I never made a big deal of it or disputed it.  Now that it's causing the "past due" flag, what should I do?  My next oldest card is the first one I opened after the BK and is nearly 6 years old. I would lose about four years of history.

 

Additionally, that next oldest card is one I'd like to drop, but the next in line to it is only 2 years old.  I have three from Cap1; a Quicksilver One which has a $39 fee and a $5,500 limit (which is the one I'd like to drop), a Venture with a $15,000 limit and a Savor with a $20,000 limit.  I wanted to combine the Quicksilver One with one of the others to get rid of one card and the associated fee, but not sure if it will preserve the age of account.  If not, then my oldest card would only be 2 years old.

 

Any advice?  TLDR - Should I dispute the Discover account now and lose the 4 years of history?  And can I combine two of my Cap1 accounts (eliminating the oldest card) and maintain my overall age of account with them?

 

Thanks all!  



Message 1 of 9
8 REPLIES 8
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: My oldest accounts and what to do with them.

I would start by pulling all three of your reports at annualCreditReport.com.  ACR is the gold standard for credit reports.  See what these reports say, with a special focus on the account in question.

 

After that, head over to Credit Check Total and make use of their $1 trial to pull your three FICO 8 scores along with the CCT 3-bureau report.  Look carefully at that as well.

 

Then sign up for your monthly free FICO 8 and credit report (Experian) at credit score.com.

 

You might also want to sign up at wallethub.com, which gives you a free TU report (ignore the score).

 

At this point you will have a number of sources of reports (with the ACR reports being the ones that you give the greatest weight to).  You will also have some sources of free or ultracheap ($1) FICO 8 scores.  Look carefully at the negative reason statements there (which indicate the things that are holding back your FICO 8 score).  Finally tend to assign a low importance to any advice you see in the tools that produce Vantage scores (Karma and WalletHub) though the actual data in the reports they provide has value (but ignore their "summary" pages).

 

Your goal in all this should be see whether ACR or CCT or other sources also indicate some kind of problem with that old Discover card.

 

PS.  You mention "losing 10 years of history" if you close the two cards.  Karma's summary page will suggest that closing cards does that, but that is in fact untrue.  The closed cards will still count toward your account age. 

Message 2 of 9
ReturnOfTheCredi
Contributor

Re: My oldest accounts and what to do with them.

Thank you for all of that.  I'm in the process of doing what you have suggested.  Just pulled the ACR for Transunion (will do the other two momentarily).  It shows the Discover account as one of three adverse accounts that will fall off in 7/2019.  It lists it as included in the BK.  There were actually more than those three accounts that were originally a part of that, so I find it odd that only those three are left.  Since it says they all fall off in July, it may be a moot point to even worry about it.  

 

Still, it begs the question as to why it seems to be showing up as an active account elsewhere.  Also, as for the age of accounts, you mention getting rid of those two won't affect it.  My concern is that everything I've ever read on the subject says otherwise and my very first credit card, opened in 1999, no longer seems to be accounted for in my history after the 2012 BK.  Like it never existed.  If what you say is true, I would think that my reports would show a history of about 20 years; however, they only seem to account for a little under 10.  Any idea why that is?



Message 3 of 9
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: My oldest accounts and what to do with them.

I may have omitted a qualifier, which is that a closed account will still count toward your age as long as it continues to stay on your report.  Closed accounts typically fall off your report ten years after they were closed (give or take a month).  A creditor also has the ability to simply delete a closed account from your report any time it wants (e.g. three months after it was closed, three years after it was closed, whatever).  That's a rare event, if the card is just a run of the mill closed card.  Various events, however, could increase the chance that a creditor might opt for deletion.  Bankruptcy is one.  Another is if a person is disputing things about the closed account; a creditor might decide just to delete to save them the headache of dealing further with the consumer.

 

I encourage you to start a separate thread devoted to asking whether a closed account still counts toward age-related factors (Age of Oldest Account, Average Age of Accounts, etc.).  You should certainly get a 2nd and 3rd opinion and not rely solely on me.  You will discover that you get a basically unanimous response from the scoring experts that it still counts and that furthermore continues to increase in age.

 

All with the caveat of course that the account will cease to count once it is removed from your report, which typically happens 10 years after it was closed.

Message 4 of 9
ReturnOfTheCredi
Contributor

Re: My oldest accounts and what to do with them.

Pulled all three FICO 8s.  They are as follows:

 

Experian - 680

Equifax - 692

TU - 679

 

Not bad considering, but not as high as places like Credit Karma, etc will say.  Only the BK is listed as a negative and three accounts associated with it show a late payment, but none in nearly 7 years now (and those fall off in about 8 months).  Oldest account listed is a student loan at 11 years, 10 months.  That old Citibank card is a no-show.  from everything I'm seeing on those reports, the Discover account shows as closed and part of the BK.  Really strange.  My real concern is if I combine the old Cap1 account with the new one, I will then only show with the history from the new card.  They have confirmed this.  So my Average Age of Accounts is going to take a decent hit.  I still think I will do it since I don't need that original card now and don't want to pay $39 a year just for the giggles.

 

Any thoughts before I move forward on that?



Message 5 of 9
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: My oldest accounts and what to do with them.

They could handle the combining in one of two ways:

 

(1) Combine the two credit limits on the new card and delete the old card completely from your reports.

 

(2) Combine the two credit limits on the new card and show the old card as closed.

 

#2 is almost certainly what they will do, even if a customer service rep implied that #1 is what will happen.  CSRs are often mistaken about what their company will do regarding your reports.

 

If #1 occurs, then your age-related scoring factors will be affected, because the account no longer appears on the report.

 

If #2 occurs, then your age-related scoring factors will NOT be affected, because the closed account still counts for age.

 

I encourage you to start a separate thread where you get more feedback on this issue of closed accounts counting just as much as open ones toward age-related scoring factors.  You should do this because you are sleptical of what I have told you, which you have every right to be, given that it flies in the face of what you believe you have heard elsewhere.

Message 6 of 9
HeavenOhio
Senior Contributor

Re: My oldest accounts and what to do with them.

When combining Capital One cards, the donor card will remain as a closed account on your credit report, just as any other closed account would.

 

You're going to need to make that annual fee go away. Combining your cards at the eventual expense of reduced account age stats may be the best option.

 

A better option — if it's available — would be to product-change (PC) to a card with no annual fee. But it looks like you have the QuicksilverOne. Those are really hard to PC, and combining would save you the headache.

 

If you want to give it a try, use the card each and every month, and make a payment each and every month. You don't have to use it for much. Then call in and check for upgrade offers each month. I was able to PC two QuicksilverOnes after 12 or 13 consecutive months of usage. A handful of datapoints around here indicate that QS1s that were PC'ed were cards that were steadily used.

Message 7 of 9
ReturnOfTheCredi
Contributor

Re: My oldest accounts and what to do with them.


@Anonymous wrote:

They could handle the combining in one of two ways:

 

(1) Combine the two credit limits on the new card and delete the old card completely from your reports.

 

(2) Combine the two credit limits on the new card and show the old card as closed.

 

#2 is almost certainly what they will do, even if a customer service rep implied that #1 is what will happen.  CSRs are often mistaken about what their company will do regarding your reports.

 

If #1 occurs, then your age-related scoring factors will be affected, because the account no longer appears on the report.

 

If #2 occurs, then your age-related scoring factors will NOT be affected, because the closed account still counts for age.

 

I encourage you to start a separate thread where you get more feedback on this issue of closed accounts counting just as much as open ones toward age-related scoring factors.  You should do this because you are sleptical of what I have told you, which you have every right to be, given that it flies in the face of what you believe you have heard elsewhere.


Oh no, not skeptical at all!  I very much value the input you have offered and I think your status in the forums here would lend a great deal of creditbility to what you have said.  My apologies if anything I said came across that way. 

 

I am almost certain that number 2 is what will happen here.  I had not considered how closed accounts staying on the report affected the AAA, but now that you have mentioned it and I have looked, almost every closed account that I can recall is still showing.  The CSR didn't really tell me one way or the other, but the Citibank card is literally the only old card (which I had in great standing for over 13 years) that seems to have literally disappeared.  Kinda stinks that they did that to me.  Good thing I have no interest in their products these days.  Smiley Wink

 

Thank you so much!  You have answered my questions quite well and I do appreciate that.  



Message 8 of 9
ReturnOfTheCredi
Contributor

Re: My oldest accounts and what to do with them.


@HeavenOhio wrote: 

A better option — if it's available — would be to product-change (PC) to a card with no annual fee. But it looks like you have the QuicksilverOne. Those are really hard to PC, and combining would save you the headache.

 

If you want to give it a try, use the card each and every month, and make a payment each and every month. You don't have to use it for much. Then call in and check for upgrade offers each month. I was able to PC two QuicksilverOnes after 12 or 13 consecutive months of usage. A handful of datapoints around here indicate that QS1s that were PC'ed were cards that were steadily used.

 

 


Very interesting.  Yes, PC'ing seems difficult with that card.  It's a Mastercard product which I had heard could only be changed to another Mastercard product (and Visa-to-Visa, etc), of which there seem to be few in their wheelhouse.  I'm doubting they will combine it with the Venture, which is a Visa Signature, but the Savor is a Mastercard World Elite.  Perhaps it will be a little easier, but who knows.  Truthfully, I would just assume move the credit over to the existing Savor and be done with it as that will be my new everyday spend card.  The Venture has served that purpose for me for the last year and half, but the Savor rewards structure is more in line with our family's spending habits.     

 

When I had AMEX prior to the BK, PC'ing was pretty painless.  That said, I want to give a BIG kudos to Cap1 for going out on a limb and approving me for that card with $3,000 right out of the gate from the BK.  Didn't even make me go the prepaid card route.  And their customer service, website and mobile app have all proven to be much better in design and functionality than Chase, Citibank and even AMEX.  So much so that I highly doubt I will pursue more cards from any of those issuers.  Cap1 has really been head-and-shoulders above the others for my needs and usage and the fact they took a chance on me when the others would not has built a pretty good deal of loyalty with me.

 

Enough on that.  Your input has been super helpful and I appreciate you taking the time to pass those suggestions on.  Hope you have an awesome New Year! Smiley Happy



Message 9 of 9
Advertiser Disclosure: The offers that appear on this site are from third party advertisers from whom FICO receives compensation.