Cancel Your Unused Credit Cards

A question about : Cancel Your Unused Credit Cards

Just a quick reminder. !If you have unused credit cards, cancel them & close the account. !This does two things

i. it improves your credit score and
ii. It means in roughly 18 months you may qualify for introductory new customer offers on the same card

Of course this doesnt mean close every card, it's always worth keeping one or two back as it gives you emergency access to funds if you should need them. !Also if you have debts on cards, and can't get new credit, make sure you do the Credit Card Shuffle so you're cancelling the right ones and not paying more than is necessary (click here to read about that)

Overall though, ditch unused cards and make sure the account is closed. !

Best answers:

• Yeah, fair enough but look at me and my Barclaycard Gold card saga....
  I paid off what I owed, and they owed me Ј1.16.
  So, I phoned them up in November and told them to close my account.
  They said it would be done ASAP and I could either give the Ј1.16 to charity or write it off. I said give it to charity and thought nothing more.
  Then I got a December statement and a January statement showing I had a ZERO credit limit but Ј1.16 in credit still. >
  When my Feb. statement came last week I hit the roof as they still hadn't closed my account so I phoned them again and this time the guy said he'd have to transfer the Ј1.16 they owed me into my bank account before he could close my account for good - jeez !
  Anyway, check my online banking and the Ј1.16 has been transferred, so hopefully I won't get a March statement.
  Better not do.... >
  You have to chase everything up nowadays don't you. Nobodies word means anything anymore, sad times we live in eh ?
• Have just finished 'shuffling' and cancelled a card. Felt so satisfying when asked why was I cancelling my card, to tell them rip off interest rates and no incentives to keep the card ie cash back etc.
  Only regret is I didn't have my eyes open sooner! Big thank you to MSE.
• Why not keep an 'old' card (even if it's 'dormant')?
  You never know when you may need to 'create' a debt!
  e.g. a new free balance transfer offer comes along, so you create a debt on an empty card - e.g. use your 'old' Egg card to put a large sum of money into your current account - then transfer that into an interest bearing or saving account. Now use the new free balance transfer to clear the Egg balance back to it's dormant state!!
  Instead of Egg in the example, use any other 'old' card's cheque facility to create a large debt (write the cheque to yourself and invest it wisely), then immediately clear the debt by way of the 0% balance transfer to the 'old' card.
• I have an unused Capital One card for that reason. My other card has an ongoing 2-4% balance transfer offer. So I can buy on my dormant card (32% interest!!!!) and do a BT to the other one as soon as I've bought the item. Saves me a bit of money on the monthly payments - I have managed to get more than Ј700 of my Ј2000 limit onto a 2-4% rate for 6 months. If you can't get any more cards, IMO this is better than nothing!!
• I remember having a similar saga Rochdale_guy but with a HSBC Gold card with 16p...
• Bank of Scotland recently sent me a statement for the grand total of 2p. By the time you factor in administration charges etc etc, it would have been cheaper for them to write off the debt, it's not like they can't afford it!!!!
• I agree fully with Rochdale guy, I am amazed at how many emails I have not even had an answer to. I will not say here what I have said to them subsequently, (well not before the 9pm watershed anyway)!
  Trev
  >
• I rarely cancel old cards, unless they start charging fees for non-usage. I've had loads of repeat offers from MBNA, Egg, Smile, Cahoot, Lloyds TSB etc. OK some will never make repeat offers but the trouble is you don't know which ones will, so I tend to keep them all!
• I have an MBNA card (well sort of, when they send me a new card I cut it up and put it in the bin). The credit card cheques they send me are 4.9% for BT's and transactions. I also have a Barclaycard which I've never used. As I'm looking to apply for a BT card and a cashback card to take advantage of the 0% periods, should I cancel these existing accounts or could I utilise them in any way?
• Thanx, I'll try them!
• I am a bit nervous of cancelling any of my (few) credit cards because the ones I have were issued while I was full time salaried and with a good income - hence plenty of credit available in case I need it.
  Now I am self-employed and my earnings are below taxpayer level, so I would not get anywhere near as good a credit limit as I did before.
  A few years ago I was victim of credit card fraud, someone spent nearly Ј7,000 on my card. The card company thought it was me and increased my credit to Ј10,000.
  The fraud was then discovered and investigated but the high credit limit was not taken away, YIPPEEE!!!
  Caterina
• I have written twice to Marbles cancelling my account, yet I have still had no reply from them? Does my account exist still if they haven't acknowledged my letters?
• I remember reading somewhere (not MSE I hasten to add) that your credit rating could be adversely effected if you cancel all your dormant credit cards in one go. The advice was you should only cancel ONE of your credit cards every six months or so, as if you cancel them all at the same time, this effectively wipes the credit profile you've built up (one week with lots of credit available to you and the next week a massive reduction).
  Does anybody know if this is true, or can I just get rid of the lot right now?!!
• I wouldnt cancel all cards. This is a balance - all unused cards whilst leaving yourself a some available credit if necessary (keeping Egg dur to it sanniversary BT offer).
  I have no info that cancelling all at once impacts your credit score. I've had some priviledged access to credit scorers, but each one is different and there are vagaries. If you have 20 and are going to cancel 18 of them - then staggering is probably a reasonable precaution. If you have 10 and are cancelling 3, i'd do them all now
  sorry to be less specific, even after years of doing this, its an area that info is VERY tough to find.
  martin
• I came across this about credit scoring and although the site is American in origin, the information maybe somewhat relevant to our credit scoring system and give you an insight into how the credit card companies work -
  https://clk.about.com/?zi=1/XJ&sdn=cr...scoring.com%2F
  Check under "canceling credit cards" under 5/5/03 as the link doesn't go direct to the page.
• I had a positive balance of 1p on my old MBNA account and they sent me a cheque when I closed the account!!
  It was personally signed by someone, then posted 1st class
  I didn't cash it as it would take more effort to go the bank, I may frame it for a laugh.
• Martin. Your comments in an email received today confirmed that cancellation of unused credit cards is an extremley good idea. I fully agree with you but for clients who no longer know how many and who with they hold cards with is there away of discovering whom they hold cards with ?? maybe credit searches ?
  I look forward to your recommendation.
  John