 Trying
to close old credit card accounts
|  Dear
Dr. Don,
I have a credit report with several open accounts
that I would like to close. I no longer have the credit cards for
these accounts. The report does not list contact information, so I
don't know how to close these accounts. How do I close these accounts?
-- Lorraine Leftover
 Dear
Lorraine,
If your credit report looks anything like mine,
there are a couple of old charge cards on it. I have a couple of
accounts that I haven't used in a decade. I'm not particularly worried
about someone using the accounts, and the longstanding relationships
may have helped my credit score.
If you want to close the accounts, take the account
number from the credit report, which may be just a partial number.
Use a search engine, such as google, to track down the company and
talk to the company's customer service department. Since you don't
have the entire account number, you'll need to have the last address
the company had on file for you.
I tried to close an old account to show you how easy
it was and found out it wasn't that easy. The company, Spiegel,
went bankrupt and liquidated its banking subsidiary FCNB. Its credit
card portfolio was sold to another firm. Spiegel came out of bankruptcy,
so I called its customer service department. The customer service
representative was very nice and gave me a number to call, while
assuring me that regardless of what my credit report said, with
no outstanding balance, my account was closed. I made the call anyway
and hit an automated telephone system that I couldn't get past.
It told me to write in with my request. I did a search on the address
and read more angry Web postings than I've ever seen before. I'm
going to let sleeping dogs lie on this one.
That doesn't mean that you'll have the same
problem. Make that search engine work for you and get these accounts
closed. Don't forget to ask that the company report that the account
was closed at the account holder's request. Good luck. Let me know
how it goes.
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