inactive accounts -- effect on FICO score?

[Anonymous]

The case I mention of the recent person with the VS card has been making me think about this very intentionally the last few days.

But it also has given me a possible framework for understanding a very odd reason code that I got on my 3B report from myFICO (which I pulled in early April).  And this was something I posted about at the time.

My mortgage scores came with the usual four reason codes for why they were not higher.  But at least one of the codes was really crazy.  I have 12 credit cards and 10 out of 12 were reporting $0.  And yet I got the reason that I had too many accounts reporting a balance. 

I ended up concluding that this must have been just crazy BS from FICO, a random reason code pulled out of the hat.  But in retrospect I realize that a number of my credit cards had not been used for 90 days, a few for 120 or 150, and one for 180.  So if all of those were suspended from that particular calculation then my ratio of "accounts with a balance" to "total open accounts" was substantially higher than I thought. 

[Anonymous]

You never know, that could be the case.  I guess the best test for that would be for you to put a small transaction on each of your "inactive" cards and PIF, allowing it to report $0 again and then see if the reason code goes away?

I understand your post on the previous page about inactive accounts possibly ceasing to report eventually.  I've never had this happen on my file though, which is why I wasn't thinking from that angle.  In fact, I have 3 accounts that have been closed for years but still report every month.  I started a thread about that last year at some point and others reported the same thing.  So, for me, if anything I've experienced the opposite where inactive or even closed accounts continue to report for whatever reason.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, it makes sense that, if FICO wanted to have an inner metric that distingusihed between accounts it defined as "active" vs. "inactive", that it would do that with the DOLA (Date of Last Activity) as opposed to Date Last Reported.  Both fields are part of your credit file, but the DOLA would be a lot better.

[Anonymous]

CGID, what is the DOLA line on your credit report expressed as?  I was just looking at my Experian hard copy report from about 2 weeks ago and I don't see this field.  Just date opened and last reported.  There is a field for recent payment, which looks like it just shows if last cycle you made a payment or if you didn't have a transation that month it reads as $0.  I don't have a hard copy of my EQ or TU report handy at the moment so I can't reference those.

[Anonymous]

When you mention looking at your hard copy report, do you mean the one from AnnualCreditReport.com?

ACR certainly has the most info of all of the places you can get your credit report, but it is still an abbreviated version of the much bigger datafile that is in the CRA database.  So while it is part of the credit file that FICO gets, it may not be in the high level summary provided to consumers by ACR.

Here is what EQ says about the DOLA:

https://blog.equifax.com/credit/what-is-the-date-of-last-activity-on-my-credit-account/

RobertEG mentioned recently that, by the FCRA, a consumer has a right to request any piece of data in his file but not on his report.

Often the people most interested in the DOLA are people with derogs, but according to the EQ piece the DOLA exists for all accounts, including open accounts in good standing.  ("If you have a credit card that you pay off in full every month, the date of last activity will indicate the last date you paid the bill.")

[Anonymous]

All of my hard copy reports are from the CRAs directly.  In my quest for GW removal of multiple baddies, I filed a few complaints with the BBB and CFPB which resulted in hard copy credit reports being sent to me from all 3 CRAs.  I've got multiple copies of those reports from each bureau from the last 2 months... sort of "before" and "after" reports showing that things I was trying to get changed did in fact get changed.

I'm not sure I've ever requested or received reports form annualcreditreport.com - If I have, it was YEARS ago.  Perhaps I should do that again?  Do they send you one for all 3B? 

[Anonymous]

Naw, you get a different report for each CRA.  It's just that the ACR is a one stop shop for requesting them.  You do not have to request all three at the same time.

[Thomas_Thumb]

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@Anonymous wrote:

CGID, what is the DOLA line on your credit report expressed as?  I was just looking at my Experian hard copy report from about 2 weeks ago and I don't see this field.  Just date opened and last reported.  There is a field for recent payment, which looks like it just shows if last cycle you made a payment or if you didn't have a transation that month it reads as $0.  I don't have a hard copy of my EQ or TU report handy at the moment so I can't reference those.

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The paste below is from a 3B report but, the info comes from the CRAs. So, status date could be compared to last activity. The condition of the account open/closed/not reported comes from the credit card company. I wonder if they could also report "inactive" and if so, would "inactive" be listed in the condition field.

[Revelate]

To offer not much but what I suggested in the other thread:

At a SWAG if there is an inactivity exclusion, it would be at the six month mark for no other reason than one has to have a tradeline which is active (which I always have assumed meant to be DOLA) to generate a FICO score at all.

I've never had a file where I could actually test it, if someone had a few number of cards and some / most / all of those were retail lines from Synchrony who doesn't report to the bureaus unless there is a balance, and I think Commenity may do this as well, then one could test it.

I tried leaving my Walmart card idle for 7 months and then letting a balance report but my scores didn't do anything... but I had plenty of other revolvers at the time (think 8 others back then) so it wasn't really an effective measurement.

I guess it could be done via number of cards with balances calculation, if you know you're good up to 1/3 on EQ FICO 8 for example, if you let your store cards idle does at some point your score change and do you now need to have smaller counts reporting to get back to pretty because your number of active revolvers has decreased?  That's really all I could think of trying other than having a painfully thin file for a test.

[Thomas_Thumb]

I suspect the credit card issuer needs to report the card "condition" as inactive to the CRAs - like they do for open/closed. I would anticipate "bank cards" are much more likely to be reported as inactive relative to store cards. 

Fico obviously does look at the condition Open/Closed so why not inactive as well (assuming the CC issuer sends that to the CRAs). I'd be interested to know if anyone has a report that lists "inactive" in the condition field as opposed to open or closed. I have a couple accounts that were closed due to inactivity and that is stated in the comment section. However, that was long before I started looking at various credit reports.