Creating AAA credit

After cleaning up all my reports I am now in the process of adding credit to my thin reports.

I have a few friends and family who have helped me out in a major way. What I had them do was to add me to a few of their open accounts as a co-borrower (not just an authorized user). It seems to be that the general rule is that after 6 months of being a co-borrower on someone elseâ??s credit card, you can then apply to have the original person removed and you would keep the card and its complete history as an individual account holder status.

The GM Card is one of the only cards I have tried that seems to be willing to give it a closer look, into removing the original cardholder right away.

How I approached them, was to write a letter and send copies of cancelled checks which show that I have been the one making payments on the account for the last year (before I was a co-borrower). I called them today and they say they will respond within 30 days with a decision. I think the fact that I had the checks and that the account has a zero balance and the original borrower and myself have no bad credit may help. Also Itâ??s been made very clear to them that the only reason the account is still active is to help me build credit otherwise the original borrower would have closed the account.

Iâ??ve now done this with 6 credit cards and one auto loan. Iâ??m not sure what my score will look like, but I canâ??t wait to check it out. My mother has had a Mervynâ??s card for other 6 years that she never uses anymore (as of last year). She wanted to just cancel the card but I talked her into adding me to it. In one short phone call I was added to the card and they told us that in 30 days I should see the history on my reports. It all appears that most creditors report either at the end of the month or the 1st of the month has been what all the creditors have told me. Wachovia was one of the ones I added myself to and they say they report to the CRAâ??s every 1st of the month but â??it may take longer to show up because the CRAâ??s are usually 30 to 60 days behind.â? If this is true then thatâ??s a bunch of bull with a capital S on the CRAâ??s part. And computers are supposed to make the world move fasterâ?¦

 

Mervyns was way too easyâ?¦all they did was ask me what my name was. They said that I was added but after I told them what I was trying to do (add the history to my reports) the guy said to make sure itâ??s done right and faster he asked for my SSN and my drivers license number and then told me that is all they needed and I would have the account added to my reports within 30 days. Funny thing is I called the day before and they told me they couldnâ??t take a SSN number over the phone for some reason. Oh well it worked out very well.

One thing people might want to know is that creditors do not need to have you give them your SSN number to find your CRA report and or to add info to your CRA. Iâ??m not saying this is legal but it does happen all the time. What I mean is that when I had a friend add me to his GM card as an authorized userâ?¦all they asked for was my nameâ?¦two months later the account and account history was on all three of my reports. Now that I have been added as a co-borrower to that same GM Card, they sent us an application for me to fill out which is pretty much like a the bottom half of any credit card application where it asks for co-borrower info.

I know that none of the companies called my work to verify my income because I own my small biz/corporation and we never got any calls from them. To answer your other question, the answer is yes most if not all credit card companies will make a hard inquiry on you the co-borrowerâ?¦I donâ??t think Mervyns did but Iâ??ll check in a few days.