How to Get Rid of Closed Accounts On Credit Reports

If you are conscious of your credit profile, you would have surely been checking your credit reports and scores regularly. Your credit score plays a huge role in building your credit profile and the decision of card issuers/lenders while approving/rejecting your credit applications also depends on what your credit report looks like. If there are no missed payments, a maintained credit utilization ratio, and all the positive factors, the chances of your approval increase. On the other hand, if there are even a few missed/delayed payments, their decision might go in a negative direction. Sometimes there are a few missed payments from your old credit accounts that you have already closed, but they still affect your credit score. If you want to get rid of these closed accounts, we will help you understand what you should do. Continue reading for further information:

How To Get Rid of Closed Credit Accounts?

Firstly, you need to understand that when you close a credit account, it doesn’t get deleted from your credit report instantly, but it remains there for up to seven years. Whatever the card issuer/lender has reported to the credit bureaus will keep affecting your credit scores. Especially if there are some payment defaults, your credit profile may seem to be risky to the borrowers even if you are a responsible credit user now. Though it is not very easy to get these closed accounts removed from your credit reports, you can try the following methods if they work:

Request The Card Issuer/Lender To Get Them Removed

You can request the card issuer/lender (to which your closed account belongs) to get the information removed that they had given to the credit bureaus. You can’t directly contact credit bureaus in such a case, but it can only be done by the card issuing bank/lender. If they agree, they can further request the credit bureau to remove the information from your credit report and it will then stop affecting your credit profile.

Wait For It To Get Removed Automatically

The closed credit accounts are automatically removed from your credit reports after seven years generally. So, you can just have patience until it is deleted. You can build a good credit history in the meanwhile so that once the accounts are removed, your credit score becomes excellent.

How Do Closed Credit Accounts Affect Your Credit History?

First of all, you must know that it is not a very good idea to close your credit accounts without a genuine reason. Closing a credit account affects your credit history in different ways as your total credit utilization ratio goes up and the average age of your credit account decreases. Both these factors can impact your credit scores in a negative manner. If you have closed an account, it doesn’t mean that all your payment defaults or other credit mistakes would be deleted from your credit report. All this will remain there for up to seven to ten years. So, instead of closing these accounts, you should try to learn from your mistakes and avoid them in the future. Also, avoid closing a credit card until it has become essential. Even if you have other better options, you can keep it open and use it a few times every two months to avoid inactivity.

Bottom Line

Getting rid of closed credit accounts in your credit report is not very easy until your card issuer is too kind to do it for you. If you think it is really important for you to get such accounts removed as you are finding it difficult to get approved for credit cards, you can request the respective issuer/lender to get it removed by contacting the credit bureaus. Otherwise, you can just have patience and wait for seven years after closing it. Just make sure that you use your current credit accounts responsibly and never default on your bill payments so that you don’t face any such situation in the future. If you have any further doubts, you can freely ask us in the comment section below!