There were two changes to my Experian report last night that added 29 points to my Credit Expert score which is now 678. I don't know which one made the dramatic change or if one or the other hadn't happened if the change would have been better. 1. Nextcard now reporting as closed by consumer with $0 balance. 2. My new Ultimate Electronics (GECC) retail account is reporting with a CL of $4,000 and a balance of $420. The new retail account gives me a total of two retail accounts with the other one being my $300 WalMart card. My score on June 9th when I signed up for the CE service was 575. This was after the first round of Lexington disputes so I assume my score in March when I began the process was in the low 500 range. That's a jump of at least 150 points just since March. Any ideas which of these caused the score to go up so much? 700+ now seems within sight for me for the first time.
Hi Dave, I had a similar experience. I paid off and closed Nextcard and the EX score jumped 15 points. This was an overnight change from 12/29 to 12/30. There were no other changes. Hope this helps.
Interesting, thanks! I may just have to close Household and Orchard next. The score analysis section on CE is interesting now. The one thing listed in the positive factor area is "The number of your accounts that are presently being paid on time is greater than the average in your credit category." The negative factors are: Presence of derogatory information on your credit file (I have four negatives on Experian). The average length of time since your accounts were opened is less than five years. Application for credit made in the last six months (I have three inquiries in the last six months, all of which are disputed and will probably fall off next week). The outstanding balances on your revolving accounts are greater than the average in your credit category (I really only have one account with a substantial balance which is the 2.9% BT I got with one of my new Citi cards).
After maxing out my Cap One before closing, My XPN CE was 745. This morning, logon to view if any change has been update to that closed Cap One card, well...surprize!! 760... This is the highest I had ever climbed and believed that paying off the maxed out debts indeed causes a hugh jump. Herman
May I ask dave how old was your nextcard?? I have a few accounts zero balance range from 1-2 years, thinking about closing them.
My Nextcard was 9 months old and had a zero balance for the last two months it was open. It was one of those $640 cl for a $500 deposit cards.
You're welcome! I put up with the silly deposit thinking I'd make payments on it for six months to establish a payment history and then would contact them and ask them to unsecure it. I called and wrote and sent a message through planetfeedback at the six month mark asking them to unsecure and they would not. I was sitting at home a couple of weeks ago thinking about it and thought I'd give it one more try. I thought there was an outside chance that if I called to close the account and told them why, they might unsecure it. The phone rep asked me why I wanted to close. I told him two reasons, first that they would not unsecure the card and I have tens of thousands of dollars of unsecured credit with Nextcard being my only secured card, and second that I wanted to get my $500 back before I had to go through FDIC to do so. Bang. Account closed. No offers to do anything to retain the account.
Well I went ahead and closed 2 accounts, one 2 yrs old and the other one yr old. I immediately went and disputed these accounts as being closed, so I will let you know if my score changes any. These were smaller limits so it won't really up my ratios much.
Ooo.. I wouldn't have disputed them if I were you. They are just as likely to be deleted as to be updated as closed.
Yikes didn't think of that But I will keep my fingers crossed. See the problems I have had in the past is that I close an account and it doesn't report it being closed. I only had a problem once when I disputed an account being closed and they removed it, I simply sent them a copy of my previous report, told them to rereport the history which they had been doing for xx amount of months and update it to closed, it worked.
