If you close a credit card account, even under good circumstances, will it show negatively on a credit report?
We have a bank of America credit card. After 2 years, they have refused to raise our credit limit, give us a lower rate of interest (lower than 19%). They have been nickel and diming us to death over the past few years.
We have other credit cards now, with lower interest and with higher limits, and want to close our BOA card, as well as many other accounts we have with the bank. Someone told me that BOA will leave negative credit report with the reportin agency, even if we don't owe anything. Is this true?
VT2007-04-16T16:25:10Z
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If you have always paid on time, and you've paid the balance off in full, and YOU, the consumer, request that they close your account, you've done your best. That's all they can report: the truth. And the Credit Reporting agencies who receive BofA's report must report the truth and delete falsehoods from their credit reports. Go to the US Federal Trade Commission's site, http://www.ftc.gov and read about the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
That said, there are risks to your Fair Isaac (FICO) credit score in closing any credit card account.
15% of your FICO score is for length of credit history. The average credit user has an oldest open account that has been open for 14 years. They also score you on the average length of time all your open accounts have been open. So if you close the old account, you'll hurt your score because (1) you lose your oldest account and (2) the average age of your accounts goes down.
30% of your score is credit utilization: how much of your credit limit is used up by your balance? On each revolving account, you need to keep your balance below 30% of your credit limit, or you will hurt your FICO score. For example, if you have a $200 credit limit, you must not have a balance higher than $60, which is 30% of $200. So the old account will have a zero balance on it, and you can't get any better than 0% utilization. They also look at total utilization: they total up all your balances, and all your credit limits. That total percentage utilization must be kept below 30% of total credit limits, or you'll hurt your FICO score. Close the old paid off account, and you'll take away $0 in total balance, but you'll take away all those dollars in credit limit, and up goes your total utilization.
10% of your score is on credit mix. The good types of credit are mortgage, secured car installment loan, prime (unsecured) major credit card (MC, V, AmEx, Disc) and store cards (Macy's, Home Depot, etc.). The bad types of credit are payday loans, personal-finance loan accounts for purposes of cash advances, still-secured credit cards and overdraft loans. Ideally, you want to have at least one account for each of the good types of credit. Close the last account in one of the good types of credit, and down goes your score.
Try picking up the phone and in a pleasant, cheerful, polite tone, telling your creditor, "I'm thinking of closing my account unless you lower my rates, waive my annual fee, and improve my rewards. What can you do for me today?" If the front-line rep doesn't satisfy, ask for his/her direct supervisor. If you get a second NO, then ask to speak to the Customer Retention department. If you get a third NO, ask for the rep's supervisor. If you don't use your trump card of offering to abandon them unless they actively compete for you, they have no incentive to compete for you. It's sad that many customers don't act because of their unrealistic fear of being seen as a troublemaker by an authority figure like a credit card company: the top (unrealistic) barriers in people when phoning creditors: fear of retribution and a sense of shame and undeservedness. The big discovery awaiting such people: entire departments are hired to keep customers happy, delighted. And even if you get 4 NO's, don't close the account at any time during the conversations. Remember, you're practicing negotiation.
If you have a good history with BOA, they can not report negative information if you close the account. However, I would do this in writting because you need to make sure it is reported as "Closed by Consumer" and not "Closed by Credit Grantor". This won't effect any scoring but anyone who manually looks at it may question if they think BOA closed the account.
However, closing it may lower your credit score. One factor is Credit Ultilization that accounts for 30% of your score. This is the amount of credit you have used vs. the amount of credit you are allowed.
For example if you have $1500 in total credit card debt, and a total limit of $3000 your utilization is 50%. But if you close your BOA Card that has a $500 limit your total limit now becomes $2500 and your ultilzation is now 60%. Because your utilization has gone up your score will take a hit. How much it goes down depends on a lot of factors, but if you keep up good payment history and reduce your utilization, you can recover from it pretty quickly.
It can impact your debt to credit ratio, which could negatively impact your credit score. What you may consider doing is paying the card off, but not closing it. After a month or two of no activity, you may get an automatic credit line increase or a promotional offer trying to encourage you to use your card.
Having said that, if you've voluntarily closed your credit card, they have to report that. To report differently would be against federal regulations and be really, really bad. If you do decide to close the accounts, you can request they send you a letter verifying that it was closed by you, the cardmember, and not the bank.
It depends. The problem with this is that if you had a credit card that you had for a very long time and you cancel it, it will take a small negitive hit on your rating due to the loss of the history of that credit card. If your credit cards have credit limits, unlike AMEX, and you cancel that credit card your credit to debt ratio will get worse in which case lower your credit rating. Overall, if you are not planning to buy a house anytime soon, within the next year, you should be ok to cancel the credit cards and you will be fine. If you are then I would wait until after the purchase to cancel.
I've heard it can negatively affect your rating, but what you could do is transfer the balance to another lower interest card and then cancel the BofA card. This would allow you to continue building your credit at a lower rate and it wouldn't affect your credit.