roberton

I just got a letter in the mail from Chase telling me that they closed two of my credit card accounts with them, effective as of last week. This is my own fault, since I hadn't used those accounts at all in more than two years, but I'm still surprised that they were closed, given how much effort Chase puts into trying to get me to open new accounts. And I don't really mind having them closed, except that I'm a bit worried that it'll hurt my credit score to have them show up on my credit report as being closed by Chase, rather than closed at my request. So I have a few questions:

1) Does it really make much difference for one's credit score if an account is closed by the issuer instead of at the customer's request? In case it matters, my credit report is otherwise spotless (though with a fair bit of churning activity).

2) Will I get anywhere if I call up Chase and try to convince them to reopen the accounts, or at least to label them as having been closed at my request? I don't want to waste time calling them if there's no chance it'll change anything.

3) Any other advice for how I should handle this?

idlewild56

I just had the same thing happen to me today, and I'm furious. I don't agree with you that it's "your fault" for not using the credit card for 2 years.

I have held several lines of credit for 5+ years and there is no reason for a creditor to close a line of credit other than a) the nominal account maintenance fee and b) the much more important fact that they're not making any money off you and/or are forecasting dire straights for the US economy 2009+.

What recourse do we have here as, yes, this *will* lower our credit score.

FYI, I did call Chase tonight and spoke with a manager who confirmed that (lowering my credit score) after she had put me on hold to check and she also stated that the account was closed due to the fee of maintaining a non-active account.

biggestbopper

First, yes, it does hurt your credit quite a bit to have an account showing on your report as closed by creditor, not closed by consumer. That is why the law was changed years ago--before the change the reports did not show who closed the account and a consumer closed account was rated the same as a creditor closed account.

The OP's experience suggests that the long standing advice to keep accounts open to help your credit score may be getting out of date--due to the danger of banks closing your account just because of the problems they created.

If OP tries to get Chase to do something, it would be useful to report back on what luck, if any, he or she had.

Could also try disputing the report via Fair Credit Billing Act procedures.

rrgg

I made a small purchase on all accounts in September. This was after someone in finance said that banks may start closing stale accounts. I guess it's happening.

UA Fan

I have re-opened a/c with Chase, try to do it soon.

USAFAN

I checked my CREDIT FILE from EQUIFAX ... and you are correct. It shows "Account closed at consumer request" ... I actually have never recognized this until you mentioned it .. and I checked it!

TAHKUCT

What steps did you have to take in order to accomplish this?

UA Fan

just called them and asked.

amartin1979

Chase cancelled all 4 of my cards. I only have Citi cards now so I am earning miles only on AAdvantage. They did not give any reason, and I have never been late.

roberton

I just got off the phone with a Chase representative. He told me that they can't re-open the accounts. But he also assured me that because the accounts were closed due to lack of use (as opposed to delinquency or other reasons), they will show up on my credit report as having been closed at my request. He said that Chase's policy is that if an account is unused for 2 years, they will interpret that as a sign that the customer wants to close the account. So they treat it just as if the customer had written them and asked them to close the account.

I'm still a little bit worried about whether the phone rep is right about this. So I'm going to make a point of checking my credit reports in a month or two to make sure. But as long as what he said is correct, it sounds like this isn't really a problem for me at all.

roberton

Just to be clear, I didn't mean that I thought what Chase did was right. I just meant that I had heard that credit card companies sometimes close inactive accounts, but I still didn't bother to use cards for accounts that I wanted to keep open.

So it's kind of like if I had left my car unlocked and parked in a bad neighborhood, and something got stolen from it. I'd consider that my fault in the same way -- not that what the thief did was right, but just that I knew that was a risk and didn't bother to do anything to prevent it.

sdsearch

This week I got a letter from Barclays (Juniper) saying they had reviewed my credit history and closed one of my (3) accounts due to inactivity. This is an account that last had activity in Dec 06, so not even quite two years! Luckily it was a card I had no plans to use any more anyway, and luckily it wasn't my oldest-history card with them.

Anyway, I had 5 cards with Chase, two of which were relatively new that I was using, one which I had used for the very last time earlier this year, and a couple which I had long histories associated with that I hadn't used in several years (definitely many more than 2). However, Chase didn't cancel any of these, but not wanting to risk anything, yesterday I called them up, and on the spot they were able to consolidate my 5 cards into the 2 that I am actively using, with no complaints, and keeping my entire available balance (it is now super huge on one of these remaining cards ), and having each of my remaining 2 cards get one of those long histories.

So it may help to proactive and choose how to deal with inactive cards, rather than let the bank choose for you.

(Having said that, I don't know if I would have thought of this had I not seen this thread, so thanks for starting it!)

rrgg

FYI, banks are also lowering super huge credit lines. I've read lots of recent examples with American Express.

sdsearch

Hence my grin above. I don't need the super huge credit line, so I was simply amused by the fact that they combined all the credit lines from 5 cards down to 2, down to the last penny.

They can now cut my super huge credit line to a small fraction of what it is, and I still would be ok! I've got over $30,000 credit line on a single card which only gets used for a few iDines once every few months. And I've got over $20,000 credit line on the other single card, where my monthly spend is a few hundred dollars (it only gets gas/grocery/drug purchases). Just how much credit limit do I need for that?

(It's the credit history -- going back to 1991 in one case and 1993 in the other -- that I really wanted to preserve by this consolidation. The credit limit is just icing.)

rrgg

In case you don't know, your credit score is also affected by the ratio of your used credit to available credit. So lowering your credit line may affect this.