In my first pass at my CR's several months back, I noticed that on all of our CR's (mine and those of The Lovely Mrs. Quixote, there was a duplicate entry for an old account with JC Penneys. I remembered having it. My wife had it before we were married. I also remember the account going to hell along with all the rest of our accounts. Well anyway, one of the entries on each CR was said Paid/Never Late. R1 or equivalent. The other said R5, 90+ days late, etc. I disputed all of them in July as duplicates. Much to my surprise, all of the negative entries dropped off, and all of the positive entries came back Verified. I decided to let it alone for a while. For the heck of it, I called up their Customer Service Dept. the other day and asked what the status is on this account. They said it's inactive, but in good standing and would I like to reactivate it? Uh, Yeah. So we got a positive tradeline dating back to 1987 from out of the blue. Merry Christmas, I guess.
Gee, I didn't even know they were still in business. I haven't seen one around in a LONG TIME. Congrats anyway....
Thank you for a great idea! In 1999 I closed a store account I'd had since 1989... I'd paid if off and thought I'd be doing a good thing closing it. Well, I've since learned that a good, long-standing trade line is a positive thing (thanks to this board). Your post gave me the incentive to call and see if they'd just reopen it instead of having to reapply. They've reopened it and now I'll have a 12 year old tradeline with good history! I think it might help make up for TU totally deleting my Sears account that I had since 1988!!!! <g> Thanks so much for sharing! Ozzy.
Be aware...this doesn't work with all creditors. I tried that with a local department store, The Bon Ton (don't get me started), and they told me that since the account was so old, I'd have to reapply and get a different card number.
