Average Age of Account Surprise
 

This may be old news to some on the board, but I just noticed an interesting artifact in my credit karma profile. Between September and November my AOA went up by 25 months, or a little over two years. The only explanation I can come up with is that I opened 2 AMEX cards in that time frame, the SPG 30K promotion and the Delta 70K promo. I have had AMEX cards for more than 25 years, so they must have somehow reported the original opening date as the age of those new accounts.

It's a well-known thing that Amex reports new personal accounts as having been opened in the year that is indicated on your cards as the "Member Since" date (which is the year your first Amex was opened, if you've continuously held at least 1 personal Amex at all times), with the month the new account is opened being the actual month.

For example, my first personal Amex was opened in Dec 1999 and that is the open date on my credit report. My SPG Amex was opened in Aug 2012, but shows a date of Aug 1999.

In fact, from past experience, this is even true when doing a Global Transfer (at least from the US to Canada).

Surprise! :D

Only works for primary cardholder though :(

My wife has multiple AMEX cards on her credit report from being an authorized user on my account but she was never the primary so they wouldn't back date for her. Oh well. We've since learned the beauty of each opening up accounts.

They will if you get the right rep on the line.

My understanding is that Amex will backdate authorized users from the date the AU first got the card, but NOT the date the account was opened. So, for example, if I open the account in 2010, but give my wife an AU card in 2012, then she'll backdate to 2012 instead of 2010. I believe backdating to the original account holder was something Amex used to do, but has pretty much shut down because of the obvious potential for abuse (stick yourself on someone's 30 year old account for the instant credit history even if it's your first CC, for instance).

Become joint holder on a USAA card and you'll get that. I gained a heavily weighted 15 years of credit history within month and Toyota financing was doing a double take on my 819 score.

I have found my new Amex cards back-dated even though I had more than a year gap when I had no Amex cards. . . maybe I just got lucky.