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OK, so here is where Im at. Was unemployed back in 02-03 and lived on credit cards. All were maxed out and in 04 I signed up for credit counsiling. Realizing how hard it was hitting my credit I quit the counsiling and began paying off my cards myself. Got the last one paid off in 2007, every one of them were paid in full with no debt reduction or settlement. I bought a house in Aug 08 with an avg score (3 bureaus's) of around 670. I also got a small auto loan last Nov (2009). I have made every payment since around 2005 on time, and have never been late on anything since then. Well I pulled my score yesterday via (freecreditreport.com) and saw my Experian score was 640. I was extremely shocked. Well it appears that Sears closed my acct (that was open since 1996) last year due to me never using it. Also Kay Jewelers closed my acct (open since 2002) due to it not being used. Also my report is showing past due 30, 60, 90, 120 and 150 on accounts that have been paid off since 05. They arent showing "currently past due" only that they were past due in the past. I have a couple questions. #1 how bad is it for my score when 2 of my oldest accounts (Sears and Kay) showed paid as agreed but "closed by grantor"? Also, when i was in that crappy CCCS (Debt free America) back in 04 they never told me that even though I was paying monthly that it wouldnt show up on my reports as non payment. I figured it wouldnt be "paid as agreed" but figured would be paid but with a * or a "settlement". So another question is, Will those late payments show up until 7 years after the last "late payment" or is it 7 years until after the final bill was paid. The accounts were closed by creditors back when they still had balances. I am just bummed because I have been doing everything right for the last 5 years and it doesnt seem to be doing anything. Right now all I have is a mortgage, a auto loan, and a CC with a 40% balance on (which I will pay off completely now to see if that helps). Is there anything I could do such as call those old companies to see if they will delete that bad info or am I just screwed for another few years?
Location: 23.7 million to 162 million miles North of Venus
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To begin with, freecreditreport.com scores are not fico's, they are fako's. Fako's can vary widely from your true fico scores, it could be as little as a few points or even as much as 100 points.
An account that was in good standing when closed with the notation "closed by credit granter" means nothing to your scores and wouldn't affect your scores at all. That notation would probably mean nothing to any creditor you apply with either, other than a mortgage underwriter .. who would probably be satisfied with the "closed for non use" explanation.
Even though the 2 cards are closed you will still have the history of the cards reporting for 10 years, or so, from the date of closure. You won't have the utilization of the credit limits from those two cards so having that last card at 40% is hurting you. When you pay it down, probably below 10%, or pay it off then your scores should go up. No real way to telling how much the rise in scores will be.
Charge offs will report for 7 years from the date of first major delinquency and the accounts were not brought current before the accounts were charged off. So, for example, if all of your accounts were 30 days past due in April, 2004 and you never brought the accounts current before they were charged off then the charge offs should be removed from your reports in April, 2011.
Your reports should have a comment stating when the negatives will be removed. Look at your reports and find that comment so you will know when to expect the removals.
To begin with, freecreditreport.com scores are not fico's, they are fako's. Fako's can vary widely from your true fico scores, it could be as little as a few points or even as much as 100 points.
An account that was in good standing when closed with the notation "closed by credit granter" means nothing to your scores and wouldn't affect your scores at all. That notation would probably mean nothing to any creditor you apply with either, other than a mortgage underwriter .. who would probably be satisfied with the "closed for non use" explanation.
Even though the 2 cards are closed you will still have the history of the cards reporting for 10 years, or so, from the date of closure. You won't have the utilization of the credit limits from those two cards so having that last card at 40% is hurting you. When you pay it down, probably below 10%, or pay it off then your scores should go up. No real way to telling how much the rise in scores will be.
Charge offs will report for 7 years from the date of first major delinquency and the accounts were not brought current before the accounts were charged off. So, for example, if all of your accounts were 30 days past due in April, 2004 and you never brought the accounts current before they were charged off then the charge offs should be removed from your reports in April, 2011.
Your reports should have a comment stating when the negatives will be removed. Look at your reports and find that comment so you will know when to expect the removals.
Im not really looking into buying something right now. I just want to make sure my credit is as good as possible incase something arises that I cant cover with my emergency fund. I really wasnt reckless with my credit it was just that I was unemployed for over a year and had to keep a roof over my head and food in my stomach.
The FICO stuff is a bunch of crap. OP I feel your pain. I went through exactly the same thing. We had a bit of trouble 5 yrs ago. Our score was terrible and we worked really hard to get our scores up. It was not easy. Living without credit is tough but it can be done and we worked very hard to get our FICO up because we wanted to buy a house. We got our score up to 680, not great but we got a great mortgage at a good rate. We were proud.
Then 6 months later we realized our old clunker car was in need of replacement. Went to the dealer and was mortified when the finance manager told us our score was below 600. WTH? In our case, one of the mortgage people we had spoke with was a shady SOB and he had ran our credit 34 times. Our realtor made a big deal about using her guy and that was a huge mistake. I had no idea until I pulled my report and my printer almost started smoking printing out all the pages. So this might be something to look at. Hard inquires will hurt badly if there are a lot of them.
That was two years ago and our score has recovered and we are now in the mid range but still far away from the 680 we had. We recently did buy a new car and I pulled my score before we went to the bank. It was still low but we thought we would try anyway and see what the credit union came up with. The score we pulled was a Fakco or whatever its called and our score was actually 30 points higher than we thought. We got a good loan and a good rate. So the good news is, if you do need to get a loan a good finance person will look at your history and not just the FICO.
We just have a mortgage, car loan and school loan. I was told that when we paid off our remaining credit card, it dropped our score. So being responsible make your FICO go down. The people that I have spoken too have said to keep a FICO up, you need at least 3 open lines of credit, 4 is even better. The FICO is designed for you to stay in debt. I have family members that are so over extended its not funny but they have scores almost up to 800 and here we are only using credit when we need it and we got low scores. Its a ridiculous system and it peeves me off. I would say if you pay off your credit card your score may go down. I am no expert but that has been my experience.
That's not true. All our cards are paid off and our score is around 810. Paying off and closing the account does hurt your credit.
same here ,every card is paid in full every month. have never had a balance in 20 years... only debt is 1% auto loan..both our scores are in the 800's
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OP I feel your pain. I went through exactly the same thing. We had a bit of trouble 5 yrs ago. Our score was terrible and we worked really hard to get our scores up. It was not easy. Living without credit is tough but it can be done and we worked very hard to get our FICO up because we wanted to buy a house. We got our score up to 680, not great but we got a great mortgage at a good rate. We were proud. 
WTH? In our case, one of the mortgage people we had spoke with was a shady SOB and he had ran our credit 34 times. Our realtor made a big deal about using her guy and that was a huge mistake. I had no idea until I pulled my report and my printer almost started smoking printing out all the pages. So this might be something to look at. Hard inquires will hurt badly if there are a lot of them.
