How Canceled Cards Impact Credit Scores

Dear Opening Credits,

I have a credit report with a few cards being reporting as "canceled by consumer." I never canceled any cards. It is negatively impacting my ability to refinance. What can I do?

- Jean

Dear Jean,

How odd. If you didn't take that action, the credit issuers must have. And if so, typically they'd inform the credit reporting bureaus that they canceled them, which would be noted on your files. The only explanation is that they chose to report it this way. Perhaps you didn't use the credit cards in a long time, so they shut them down due to lack of use rather than for poor behavior. The only way you can know for sure is by asking your creditors -- so call and find out.

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As for the impact the closure is having on your refinancing options, it may be less than you think.

In general, canceling a credit card account will not hurt a credit score, which a bank or other financial institution will check to see if you're eligible for the deal. The only way it might is if doing so altered your debt-to-credit-limit ratio

To clear all this up, you have to first understand how a credit score -- and I'll use the FICO criteria

There are five scoring categories in a FICO score. At 35 percent, your payment history is the most important. Therefore, if you've always paid on time, you're fine there.

The next weightiest category, however, is the amount of money you owe compared to how much you can borrow -- the ratio of how much debt you have compared to your credit limit. This is where you could have some trouble when open credit cards are closed.

It works this way: If you already hold balances but then decrease your borrowing power by canceling accounts (whether done by you or the creditor), your balances might suddenly be too close to your overall credit limit

The remaining three FICO categories are minor compared to the first two. They are how long you've been using credit (15 percent), the types of credit in use (10 percent) and inquiries, also called new credit (10 percent).

Mind that notice of account closure is not specifically included in the scoring process, but a credit card company charging a bad debt off is. So let's say you opened a retail account but never really used it, the balance was zero and don't want the card anymore. It would be no big deal if you or the store closed it (as long as you have very little other debt). Yet if you did charge the card up, failed to pay the bill and then the creditor canceled the account and sent the debt to collections, that would be a very big deal. Your FICO score would suffer.

So that's your credit score. If it's good, great. If it's not, figure out where you've gone wrong and change it. Maybe you need to reduce some debt (or even open a new card) to improve your utilization ratio

Outside of your score, know that lenders won't perceive a "closed by consumer" notation to be negative, so don't worry about that. And, like with the credit issuers, the only way you can get specific information about why you're being turned down is by contacting the lenders and asking them exactly why.