[Freakazoid]

Originally Posted by Nick@DetailAddict

sorry to thread jack but from doing a lot of research in the past about how to maintain good credit, build credit, etc.., one of the things that I remembered was to keep your old accounts open. Long story short, I messed up my credit in college, score dropped to 520, repaid my debt within 5 years, signed up for a credit card with a $75 annual fee just so I could start to rebuild my credit, and currently have an average score of a little over 800 according to the 3 main credit bureaus. I've been paying the renewel fee each year even though I have 0 balance on it. I also have 2 other credit cards open (no annual fee). Should I keep the one with the annual fee open or shut it down. Thanks

So 5 year old card? if you truly never use it, and it's constantly at $0. toss it, you'll take a small credit hit, but i'd say worth the $75 annual fee.

if you do that then, you need to be even more careful about how high you reach your credit limits on the other cards though. you'll lose $x of your total credit limit, which means you automatically get bumped up X% of your credit line usage (if this makes sense).

You may want to think about using it though? is there ANY benefits/rewards?

[Joonsup]

yeah that's why i dont want to toss it right away. i know i wont have as much overall credit available combining the three cards but wondering how much of a hit i'll take and how long till i recover from it. There's no benefits, no cashback, no points for that card too.

[fdsasdasdf]

It's really not hard to have good credit.

Unless you're mind-bogglingly retarded.

[Freakazoid]

Originally Posted by Nick@DetailAddict

yeah that's why i dont want to toss it right away. i know i wont have as much overall credit available combining the three cards but wondering how much of a hit i'll take and how long till i recover from it. There's no benefits, no cashback, no points for that card too.

if you have no big purchases coming up, you may want to start a new card and phase that one out and close the other one

[darkcloud]

I don't get the Amex issues. there must have been a bigger reason than to just cancel you freak. I find that very odd.

I personally love my Amex gold. I use it for everything from my small mcdonalds buys to large purchases. never had one issue and I'm about 8 years in with them.

I no longer have to pay off in full monthly and get almost 90 days to pay off transactions over $100. their fraud alerts make the cards more than worth it.

I'd do bill pay through them if it wasn't a pain in the ass. my bank is just easier. I rarely go places that don't take Amex and they are usually small vendors.

also that is the only card we use aside from our debit if we have to. we have one mortgage and one car payment. we are both 815+ credit scores.

oh and the BMW card sucked. they closed me due to inactivity. that doesn't hurt your score. at least it did nothing to mine.

[ZJP]

Originally Posted by darkcloud

I no longer have to pay off in full monthly and get almost 90 days to pay off transactions over $100.

How so? I have the Gold card too but I always PIF.

[Freakazoid]

Originally Posted by darkcloud

I don't get the Amex issues. there must have been a bigger reason than to just cancel you freak. I find that very odd.

I'd love to hear it too. It was my second credit card ever. 2k limit, one day they axed it to 1k. a week or two later they cancelled it entirely. No notice, no nothing, just one day it was changed. The next it was closed entirely.

Again, never a late payment, never over the limit.

They got a long term enemy that day, especially when they refused to ever give me a legitimate reason.

Next on my list is shell mastercard, but admittedly this is partially due to my own credit stupidity. (long story they closed my account back when I was stupid and went past due by a couple months, re-opened it a year later after they requested me to open it and 'get my credit back on track', then they closed it again after I was already on way to fixing my stupidity so there was no more late payments etc...but again this was a little deserved).

AMEX I've always been at a loss for though, I have no idea what happened there.

[darkcloud]

Originally Posted by ZJP

How so? I have the Gold card too but I always PIF.

not really sure to be honest. I had had the card for a couple years and i got a notice that I was now eligible to take part in a new program or something. if I spent over $250 on a transaction I was given a grace period and didn't have to pay it in full monthly, just on that transaction though. so the rest of my balance was still due monthly. over time that single transaction amount kept getting dropped to where it's now at $100 and they gave me the closing month plus another 20 or so days on everything else.

I don't pay monthly though. I'll charge everything I can on the card then make a payment, maybe not pay it off but something decent. I continue charging and pay. so i don't make traditional monthly payments. maybe that had something to do with it

Originally Posted by Freakazoid

AMEX I've always been at a loss for though, I have no idea what happened there.

sounds like they mistook you for another account to me. you would think that's not possible but things get fucked up everywhere. like they were canceling another account did yours on accident but instead of doing you right, they realized you were being easily taken they just said fuck it so that they didn't have to give you anything to make it right. maybe haha

[txusa03]

I am not going to read all these remarks. But to OP, who know what is going on inside these credit agency. I am not an expert but I have had a few loans and have talked to a loan manager to understand a few methods of calculating credit score.

This is just 1 example of what I have been told:

If you only have 1 CC, it will hurt your CS. Why, the credit agencies rate this as a weakness implying you do not get lots of CC offers due to your undesirable financial status.

If you have too many CC, 6+ (for example), the credit agencies see you as a high risk for potentially defaulting on a CC payments or you take out more credit then you bring in from your income.

If the above are true, I would stick with 3-4 CC.

[Freakazoid]

Originally Posted by darkcloud

sounds like they mistook you for another account to me. you would think that's not possible but things get fucked up everywhere. like they were canceling another account did yours on accident but instead of doing you right, they realized you were being easily taken they just said fuck it so that they didn't have to give you anything to make it right. maybe haha

lol well I was as much of a pain in the ass as I could be, never got anywhere
I realized this last night though....


all you guys that love AMEX are the ones paying >$200 a year in fees. Obviously AMEX is going to favor you more. I guess my beef is for their regular credit cards, not the charge cards as much.

[BTM]

Originally Posted by Freakazoid

AMEX I've always been at a loss for though, I have no idea what happened there.

A similar thing happened with me and Chase bank. In college my mom would go and deposit money every 2 weeks or so. One day I get a call from her saying that Chase is telling her the account has been closed, and since it's obviously not her account, they can't tell her why.

I went into the local branch and they said it had been closed due to a month prolonged negative balance. I say this is impossible, I had been using my debit card quite frequently the past month with no issues, and monitoring everything and while I had overdrafted once about 1.5 months earlier, I had immediately re-established good standing in the account and was in the black the next day when I realized it. This shouldn't have been an issue, had my savings and checking accounts been linked for overdraft protection like I had signed up for. Once before when my card was stolen, I noticed it wasn't linked and went in to get it resolved, was assured it had, yet it clearly wasn't.

Anyway, the local branch said that they couldn't do anything about it except tell me why it was closed, so I immediately opened another checking/savings account before this one got reported to the credit bureaus and I wouldn't be able to. I'm still fighting (a losing battle) to get it taken off my credit report. I have provided statements (that they actually provided me) of the activity in that period they claim I was overdrawn, including purchases in 4 different states as I was travelling at the time, and never was I overdrawn or never once did I have an issue with the card.

This is quickly becoming TL;DR, but they also used this as an excuse to float my tax return for nearly a year. I had e-filed, and in between filing and getting the return, they close the account. So I call and see how to proceed, they say the gov't will attempt to deposit it in a closed account, the deposit will bounce back, and they will issue a physical check. Which never arrives. Call after call to Chase saying the sent it back and the IRS saying they haven't received it, it finally takes a conference call between all 3 parties, which I have my lawyer recording, for the IRS to go on record saying they never received the deposit back from Chase. Chase had been holding it for 10 months or so, and I would have to get them to issue me a money order in a local branch. So I go try and do that. Immediately, I am given shit, saying this isn't how it works, etc. etc... I say I have a recording of the conversation by my lawyer between myself, the IRS, and Chase, low and behold the bank manager is summoned, 5min later I'm walking out with my tax return, and depositing it into BofA, who I've yet to have a problem with.

CSB

[Verbiage]

Originally Posted by BTM

Having good credit gets you a BMW loan, having a BMW gets you laid

This is going to be my new sig.

[Freakazoid]

Originally Posted by BTM

A similar thing happened with me and Chase bank. In college my mom would go and deposit money every 2 weeks or so. One day I get a call from her saying that Chase is telling her the account has been closed, and since it's obviously not her account, they can't tell her why.

I went into the local branch and they said it had been closed due to a month prolonged negative balance. I say this is impossible, I had been using my debit card quite frequently the past month with no issues, and monitoring everything and while I had overdrafted once about 1.5 months earlier, I had immediately re-established good standing in the account and was in the black the next day when I realized it. This shouldn't have been an issue, had my savings and checking accounts been linked for overdraft protection like I had signed up for. Once before when my card was stolen, I noticed it wasn't linked and went in to get it resolved, was assured it had, yet it clearly wasn't.

Anyway, the local branch said that they couldn't do anything about it except tell me why it was closed, so I immediately opened another checking/savings account before this one got reported to the credit bureaus and I wouldn't be able to. I'm still fighting (a losing battle) to get it taken off my credit report. I have provided statements (that they actually provided me) of the activity in that period they claim I was overdrawn, including purchases in 4 different states as I was travelling at the time, and never was I overdrawn or never once did I have an issue with the card.

That really blows about the tax return, that would piss me off to no end.

Problems like what you saw and I saw makes you realize how helpless and at mercy you are to these institutions. You can't do jack shit if they decide to fuck with you/your credit score.

[BTM]

Originally Posted by Freakazoid

That really blows about the tax return, that would piss me off to no end.

Problems like what you saw and I saw makes you realize how helpless and at mercy you are to these institutions. You can't do jack shit if they decide to fuck with you/your credit score.

Yup, unbelievable since its on my credit report as an account closure, and a collection account since they claim it was negative therefore I owed them money. Not once did I get correspondence warning me they would close it, and once it was closed, not once did I get correspondence from them trying to collect what they said I owed them. Probably because they owed me my fucking tax return

[ZJP]

Originally Posted by darkcloud

not really sure to be honest. I had had the card for a couple years and i got a notice that I was now eligible to take part in a new program or something. if I spent over $250 on a transaction I was given a grace period and didn't have to pay it in full monthly, just on that transaction though. so the rest of my balance was still due monthly. over time that single transaction amount kept getting dropped to where it's now at $100 and they gave me the closing month plus another 20 or so days on everything else.

Very interesting, maybe it also has to do with you being a customer of theirs for a long time as well. I've only had my gold card since last July so I guess I can't expect much yet.

[Maestro]

I can tell you the wife and I both have over 800 and she actually has higher than me, the only reason I can figure out is all the CC's are in her name except one.

We have two major CC one was discover which was our primary for many years and we have Visa for places who would not take discover, The Discover has a very high limit and we hit it a few times when the wife was traveling lots for work. This CC has been open since 88 and we never paid any interest on the card. We now switch to the VISA as primary and it has even a higher limit, but never came near to maxing it out, and never paid interest on it. We originally got it when CC use to run those get 6 or 12 month no interest for using the car. Love using other peoples money.

We have a mortgage and two car payments when we last check our credit when we refi the house to the 15 yr mortgage and had paid off other no-interest loans in the past so he have a strong history of making payments and no missed or late payments.

What I am told is the reason we are not at the max is due to the fact we have too many revolving credit cards, you know the store card, wife gets these all the time to save 10% or getting in store deal with you use their cards. I hate these things since you never know when they are due.

The other thing that shows up in the report is utility bills and such, and those too are in the wife's name. Many years ago we put this all in the wife's name due the fact she really had no credit history and we need to get a credit history for her when we got married and this was good way and we never bother to change.

Having CC and not using them does not help, also using them and paying them off does not help always, unless you charge them up high and pay them off quickly or completely each months it shows you can manage your money and cash flow. The thing that will kill your credit is having balance on multiply cards at once. Carrying a balance on one is fine especially if you making payments regularly.

[darkcloud]

Originally Posted by ZJP

Very interesting, maybe it also has to do with you being a customer of theirs for a long time as well. I've only had my gold card since last July so I guess I can't expect much yet.

Yeah maybe, I've had my gold since early 04 and my blue since late 02(I dont use it anymore but its linked to my gold so I leave it there since it was the "original" card I opened with amex). I wanna say it was around 08 sometime that I started getting these offers.

They send me platinum offers every other month. I haven't switched since the annual cost is more and I don't travel nearly enough to take advantage of the extra perks. I am thinking of switching to the gold premier since it has a little better rewards system for only +$50/yr.

[450whp335i]

Originally Posted by Blake

also, citi prestige card is a great top echelon card. it's got a $500 annual fee, but great benefits/rewards, especially if you travel.

Unless you have CitiGold