Old Cancelled Cards
"FICO 08, a newer fico formula that many lenders are simultaneously switching to now, ignores artificially lengthened credit history/score by piggybacking. So don't feel left out in that regard.  Average age of accounts is affected when closed accounts fall off your credit report, which can take 7 years, not just by closing them. But I'm not familiar with the latest ""weightings"" of these things, so its tough to say how significant it will be when that happens. There are also newer FICO formulas, that may become relevant 7 years from now, so it is definitely something to be conscious of but they aren't immediately consequential, since you can do other things to improve your credit worthiness in the near term." Closed accounts are used when calculating Average Age of Accounts (AAoA) by FICO. They will drop off your report 7 years after their closure, at which time your AAoA will decrease and most likely lower your credit score. Keeping your oldest card with an annual fee (AF) is a tough question. Since the exact calculations are a secret, it's hard to quantify the value of that card. Keep in mind that if you do decide to close it now (or right before the next AF) it will continue to count for the next 7 years. What you can do is the following: Assume you won't be applying for any new cards in the next 7 years. Look at all your current accounts and calculate the AAoA of all of them that would still be on your report 7 years from now. Calculate it with and without your oldest card. The difference will show you the effect closing the card today will have. There is a potential way to raise your AAoA depending on if you have an AMEX card. AMEX reports all accounts as being open from your original 'member since' date. If your oldest AMEX (ever, not necessarily still open) is older than your AAoA, opening a new AMEX will actually raise your average.  age of accounts is 15% of your score. note that some websites that calculate your AAoA for you (like creditkarma) don't count closed accounts, but since FICO does the age those websites generate should be ignored.
I disagree with the reply.   Your both impressions are correct. -   Do not close old credit cards because they keep your credit rating high (fico score) -   Also low utilization that credit cards report to credit rating companies, improves your rating. "* Don't underestimate the power of facial recognition wizardry. * No, you don't have to show ID to activate the cards.  But keep in mind that they know which cards were activated.  There is a paper trail.  I'm sure Amex, Visa, MC would happily deactivate the cards for them.  Target just has to report that the cards were activated using fraud/theft. * If you took advantage of this ""deal"" your best bet is to get the prepaid credit cards and spend the money asap at another store (walmart) before they are deactivated.   * If indeed this legally is considered fraud, and they go after you for it, you could end up in a giant heap of trouble as many laws have been broken.  And, if you use any of the ""fraudulent"" CC's to make online purchases from a company in another state you could face even more federal charges." There is no central government signature database.  (at least not in the US, and at least not yet) For debit and credit card transactions, the merchant may check the signature on your reciept against the signature on back of the card.  This is intended to verify that you didn't steal the card. So, if you want to change the signature on the back of the card, all you need to do is get a new card and re-sign it.  Your card has an expiration date.  When that happens, you will get a new card to re-sign.  If your card expires soon, you can just wait. If you are impatient, you can call your bank and ask for a new card.  If they give you a lot of grief about issuing a new card (it is an unusual request), you can tell them you lost your card and need a new one.  In that case they will typically disable the old card and issue a new one with a new account number. Note that if you want to change how you sign your name, there are some other places you should also update: Also, keep in mind that people's signatures naturally drift over time.  This fact is generally understood and accepted by people who check signatures. I found a german article describing the legal situation in Germany. To summarize As outlined by the many possible reasons in the other answer, it is unclear from the information I have, whether condition 1 holds. Also condition 2 may not hold since the credit card was frozen. I suppose this makes a good argument to MasterCard and my bank, but I also suspect they will not care unless it comes with a attorney letterhead. Closing your oldest revolving account will lower your average age of accounts and hurt your score.  No ifs, ands, or buts.  The amount it drops is hard to tell, and it may only be a few points if your other cards are fairly old as well. While the FICO scoring algorithm is proprietary and hard to predict, you can use the official FICO Simulator to estimate the impact.  Based on the information you provided (5+ cards, oldest card 5 years), your estimate is 750-800.  Performing the same estimate and only changing the number of cards and age (2-4 cards, oldest card 2-4 years), the score estimate drops to 735-785.  Both of these estimates assume you have 9% or less utilization.  You can probably estimate that your score will drop at least 15 points. However, it may not matter to you whether your score is maximized.  Once you get above a certain FICO score, it doesn't matter.  For example, I recently refinanced a vehicle and asked the loan officer about their lowest APR, and found out that they required a 780 FICO for it.  Kind of like the difference between getting a 91 or a 99 in a class, an A is an A. Some other factors you may want to consider before you make your choice: I went there as a last resort for a few items a week ago. They had some promotion going on where spending so much money got you a $5 gift card. The thing expired a few days later. Sure, I could have looked on the card, but the ads for that and the cashier never mentioned this. And since when do giftcards expire? I don't think you should have to cancel your card.  Call your customer service line and just indicate to them what has happened.  You aren't getting service for what they are charging you and they are refusing to remove it themselves. Recently, over 11 lakh PAN cards has been deactivated by the Income Tax Department to fetch out fake and duplicate PANs. The main targets are the individuals who are having multiple PAN cards and those with PAN cards issued under fake documents. Blocking fake PAN cards can help the government restrain identity theft and purchase of benami properties. You will need to first try and get the seller to refund.  (Get the name of the person you talked to and a date and time). Then you can contact the bank the card was issued through and dispute the charge.  I would make sure that you retain any proof that you purchased one item and received something other than what you purchased.  The seller does have recourse if they did fulfill their side of the transaction but if they are a legitimate merchant and actually sent you the wrong product most will not bother. There may be issue if you need a replacement card, as the bank may not be willing to post the card to you outside of the UK. Hits to your credit rating for canceling one of the newer cards will be a small hit for a few months.  You do have some options.  I also believe that a person with good credit should have multiple cards: I like having a cash back card for the majority of our transactions. Unfortunately that card isn't accepted everywhere, so I have two other cards with broad market coverage to make sure we always have an option if the vendor doesn't take the main card.  Also having multiple cards makes sure that if there is an issue with one card you are never caught without a card. One time the main card was rejected by a gas station because my wife just used the same account to buy gas across town. When we got home their was a fraud alert message on our phone. "Did you even read the article?  These were people who went into the store and did this in person.  there are no ""orders"" to cancel.  As for invalidating the cards, again, the article stated that many people took the Target gift cards and used them to buy Amex and Visa gift cards.    tl;dr **RTFA**" "Having worked in the financial industry, I can say 9:10 times a card is blocked, it is not actually the financial industry, but a credit/credit card monitoring service like ""Falcon"" for VISA. If you have not added travel notes or similar, they will decline large, our of country purchases as a way to protect you, from what is most likely fraud. Imagine if you were living in Sweden and making regular steady purchases, then all of a sudden, without warning your card was used in Spain. This would look suspicious on paper, even it was obvious to you.  This is less to do with your financial institution, and more to do with increased fraud prevention. Call your bank. They will help you." I'm not a lawyer, and am certainly not familiar with your jurisdiction, but the general guidelines I've seen around this kind of situation are: If all else fails, you could just cancel the card, though I'm not sure what liability you have to honour the contract. I cancelled a card once to stop being charged by a particularly annoying company and had no problems, but I'm not sure if that is a good way to deal with it in general. You're right to keep the oldest one.  That's an asset to your credit rating. Since you're already responsible with your credit, a dip in your credit rating doesn't really matter unless you're looking for another loan, like a mortgage. I personally like the cash-back rewards because they're the most flexible, so you have a good thing going with that card. Do those reward cards give you perks on all of your purchases?  If they do, then look carefully to see if you can do noticeably better with another card.  If not, it may not really be worth it. Regarding cancelling one of the cards, I wouldn't, and here's why.  Your cards can get compromised, and sometimes more than one gets compromised at the same time.  I was glad that I had three cards, because two of them got hit the same day.  Hence, having three cards hit on the same day is possible, and you'll be glad that you have the fourth.