I know what you’re talking about. DW has two Amex cards with the opening listed as the membership date way back. Unfortunately one is the Costco card that was closed when opening the Citi card.

But once closed, the account holder field for the card in the credit reports was changed to Terminated, in my case formerly Authorized User. So it seems FICO feels compelled to assume it was formerly Individual, increasing the AAoA that a FICO score report provides guidingly.

Including DW’s other backdated Amex card that I’m AU on, the AAoA climbs even higher naturally, although not particularly real as AU piggybacking is something that credit scoring over time is more or less moving away from. Given what you believe in, my AAoA is 9, 10 or 11 years.

Along those lines, I am tempted to go into my surprise over Chase’s 5/24 rule counting AU cards, but that’s another story entirely.