TransUnion No Longer Backdating Old American Express Cards?

American Express used to backdate new cards (e.g when you opened a new card they would reported your member since date, rather than when the new credit card was actually opened). This practice ended on March 21st, 2015 for new cards, cards that were already opened and reporting the old date were not affected.

Some people (here, here & here) have noticed that TransUnion are no longer backdating these cards and they are using the actual date these cards were first reported/opened instead. This doesn’t seem to be affecting everybody currently, it might be only reports that were updated after February 20th are being affected so far (please share your datapoints in the comments below).

The reason people care about this is that it affects your average age of accounts (and for some people it significantly affects this) and this is a scoring criteria for the FICO score. It should be noted that length of credit history only accounts for 15% of your FICO score and average age of accounts only counts for a small portion of that (oldest account is more important).

Hat tip to reader Jack for making me aware of this

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M
M (@guest_363560)
March 3, 2017 09:18

Good news! According to today’s updated Credit Karma report, Transunion once again shows the backdated opening dates for my oldest, open Amex cards. So it undid the changes from a week ago.

Cindi Anderson
Cindi Anderson (@guest_363183)
March 2, 2017 15:25

Anybody know about Discover? My husband opened a new one and they seemed to go back to the date he first opened a Discover. If that is still true I want to open one because all my cards are short and that’s making my score lower.

Gloobnib
Gloobnib (@guest_362243)
February 28, 2017 23:58

My credit karma report (last update 2/24) still shown my two oldest Amex cards being backdated to 1980 (before I was old enough to have a cc!). This is true for both TU and equifax reports.

Abey
Abey (@guest_362311)
March 1, 2017 04:10

10 years before i was born 😆

Abey
Abey (@guest_362069)
February 28, 2017 20:01

A few years ago i closed an Amex Green card and an Amex Gold card due to annual fees.
Back then they backdated and instead of showing up as 2014 it backdated to 2007.
To this date im pinching myself for closing them as i couldve downgraded or product change.
And now with all the new accounts, im struggling to stay above the 2 year average which seems to be the biggest impact of what the 15% is accounted for.
(15% might not sound much but it can be a big differents if your score is 761 or 729).

Abey
Abey (@guest_362310)
March 1, 2017 04:08

Ye youre right. It takes 10 years to fall of the report.
With 102 open accounts and 21/24. Its hard to maintain a 2+ years credit age average history.

CGID
CGID (@guest_361861)
February 28, 2017 13:34

Perhaps we’ll be able to better assess what might be going by this weekend. It’s possible that this could be a weird Credit Karma glitch, and also possible that the first datapoints are coming in on TU, but only because Equifax and Experian are taking a few more business days to update their database.

If a few people were to do a fresh pull this weekend (after several more business days have elapsed) from all of the following sources, that would be very helpful:

$1 free trial at Credit Check Total (TU, EQ, EX)
Karma (TU, EQ)
WalletHub (TU)
SavvyMoney (TU)

That would help clarify whether this is unique to Karma, unique to TU, or neither.

Aahz
Aahz (@guest_361924)
February 28, 2017 14:33

The DPs linked in the post show it’s not unique to CK. Reports include it happening on CCT & WH as well.

CGID
CGID (@guest_361927)
February 28, 2017 14:37

Are you speaking of the myFICO thread?

Evan
Evan (@guest_361835)
February 28, 2017 12:55

How do you know oldest account is more important than AAoA?

Aahz
Aahz (@guest_361922)
February 28, 2017 14:31

Plenty of research supporting this over in the MyFICO forums – http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Understanding-FICO-Scoring/bd-p/ficoscoring

JL
JL (@guest_361827)
February 28, 2017 12:48

Another impact here may be the Chase 5/24 rule. While the AMEX cards back-dated, you can in theory open new cards without having it show up as a new account within the last 24 months. Now that the dates are resetting, it could put you over the 5/24 mark…

Is that a correct interpretation?

juan
juan (@guest_361868)
February 28, 2017 13:40
  JL

That interpretation is correct.

Aahz
Aahz (@guest_361919)
February 28, 2017 14:30
  JL

While your interpretation is correct in theory, it’s irrelevant in practice. AMEX back-dating ended March 2015, so any (previously) back-dated cards will be past 24 months as of tomorrow.

PG
PG (@guest_361998)
February 28, 2017 16:40
  JL

I was just wondering about this question regarding other banks that still backdate AU’s to the original date the credit line was opened. In those cases as long as the account is more than two years old, it’s correct that it would not affect chase’s 5/24 rule?

Andrew Wang
Andrew Wang (@guest_361794)
February 28, 2017 12:05

An Amex card I opened on Dec. 2014 that was previously backdated, now shows that date. Sad.

gman
gman (@guest_361771)
February 28, 2017 11:08

Interesting DP from citi. I applied for aa card and was not instantly approved. They pulled from Equifax and i got approved. As far as i can recall they had never done that prior… It worked out well for me because my Equifax score is well into the 800s so even after a 15 point hit it still remains excellent.

M
M (@guest_361757)
February 28, 2017 10:40

On Friday’s Credit Karma report my two backdated cards were changed to their actual opening dates — technically they were deleted and two new ones added. That was rather disappointing.