Clothing Store Credit Card Account closed but not deleted
You have little chance of getting it deleted. I have the same situation, I closed mine in 2006, and the login still works. Keep the paperwork that you closed it (or print a PDF of the site showing so), and forget about it. If someone is trying to cheat, re-opening it should be the same difficulty as making a new one in your name, so it is not really an additional risk. You could also set the username and password both to a long random string, and not keep them. That soft-forces you to never login again. Note that it will also stay on your credit record for some years (but that's not a bad thing, as it is not in default; in the contrary). The only negative is that if you apply for credit, you might be ashamed of people seeing you ever having had a Sears or Macy's card or so. "They close accounts to render them inoperative.  They never delete accounts because they want to retain the data to inform any future decision to give you credit.     Also, 99% of the time, if a customer demands their account be deleted, it's because of adverse credit marks and the angry customer wants this accurate information to stop burning their credit report. The answer in this case absolutely must be ""heck, no!""  That pretty much precludes any valid reason to delete an account.  As such, their business systems are not built in a way to make account deletion really possible. Even if you got a job with the company's data-processing department and had direct query/write accesses to the databases, you would find it technically inachievable to surgically remove the specific data (without risking serious damage to the entire DB).  And it would still be in transaction logs, so not gone forever.   Another reason to keep your account alive is to give you online access to statements.  After all, the IRS can audit you 5 years after the fact, so it's real nice to be able to go back that far.  Most places the statue of limitations is 6-7 years, so again, defending yourself in a lawsuit, here's raw data from an independent third party that you couldn't have faked.  Strictly from a customer service POV, that means you can self-serve on requests like that, instead of having to involve expensive staff time.     I totally get the annoyance of having yet another login/password you don't want to have flapping out there in the breeze potentially exposed to a cracker... but given that the account is closed, it's probably not going to cause you much trouble.  If anything, change the password to one outside your normal choices, perhaps even one you don't know (retain). As long as you retain the email you have tied to the account, you can always reset the password on the off chance you ever need to get back in.   Speaking of that, don't rely on your ISP's (me@rr.net or me@att.net or me@xfinity.com), get a Gmail account. I have a dedicated gmail account just for stuff like that." If it is closed, you should be able to trust that it is closed permanently. What you still have is the online account. Imagine this would be removed and then the account would be re-activated? That should not happen, but the way you see it, you must be afraid of that as well. What I mean to say: See these two things as completely separate. There are three parties involved here: there's the store that issued you the card, then they have some bank that's actually handling the account, and there is some network (VISA, MasterCard, etc.) that the transactions go through. So one avenue to consider is seeing whether all three are aware of you canceling the card.
"* 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." In your specific case, I would leave them open unless you have a specific reason for wanting to close them - particularly, unless you feel closing them is necessary for you to not misuse them. The impact on the credit score is not why I say this, though.  Much more important are the two competing real factors: My suggestion would be to take the cards and put them in your file cabinet, or whatever would cause you to not use them.  In fact, you could even cut them up but not close the accounts - I had an account open that I didn't possess a physical card for several years for and didn't use at all, and it stayed open (though it's not guaranteed they'll keep it open for you if you never use it).   In an emergency you could then ask them to send you a new copy of the card very easily.  But, keep them, just in case you need them. Once you have paid off your balances on your balance-carrying cards, then you should consider closing some of them.  Keep enough to be able to live for ~4-6 months (a similar amount to the ideal rainy day fund in savings, basically) and then close others, particularly if you can do so in a way that keeps your average account age reasonably stable. You also might want to see what sort of documentation the credit card company has. Companies can get pretty lazy sometimes about recordkeeping; there have been cases where banks tried to foreclose on a property but weren't able to produce documents establishing the mortgage. With your father dead, is there anything other than the credit card company's word that the debt is valid? I closed an account with them for an unrelated reason (down payment brought account below minimum and I didn't want to switch types of accounts or pay a fee) and it was super easy. I was surprised at how quick the whole process was. That said, I didn't have a brokerage or even any CDs - just checking and savings and my automatic payments were tied to other bank acccounts. "I don't know why you shut it down from a C&amp;D letter. If anything you should have seen it as them asking you to remove his name and any trademarks from your site.  They don't own ""fuck you"" being printed on clothes. Sounds like you pulled the trigger too quick. Bet there was plenty of money to still be made with that site. Maybe someone more resilient will pick up the torch." "I was I a similar position as you, and sometimes credit bureaus might be difficult to deal with, especially when high amounts of money are involved. To make the long story short, someone opened a store credit card under my name and made a charge of around 3k. After reporting this to the bureaus, they did not want to remove the account from my credit report citing that the claim was ""frivolous"". After filing a police report, the police officer gave me the phone number for the fraud department of this store credit card, and after they investigated, they removed the account from my credit. I would suggest to do the following: Communicating with Creditors and Debt Collectors You have the right to:  Stop creditors and debt collectors from   reporting fraudulent accounts. After you give them a copy of a valid   identity theft report, they may not report fraudulent accounts to the   credit reporting companies. Get copies of documents related to the   theft of your identity, like transaction records or applications for   new accounts. Write to the company that has the documents, and include   a copy of your identity theft report. You also can tell the company to   give the documents to a specific law enforcement agency. Stop a debt   collector from contacting you. In most cases, debt collectors must   stop contacting you after you send them a letter telling them to stop.   Get written information from a debt collector about a debt, including   the name of the creditor and the amount you supposedly owe. If a debt   collector contacts you about a debt, request this information in   writing. I know that you said that the main problem was that your credit account was combined with another. But there might be a chance that identity theft was involved. If this is the case, and you can prove it, then you might have access to more tools to help you. For example, you can file a report with the FTC, and along with a police report, this can be a powerful tool in stopping these charges. Feel free to go to the identitytheft.gov website for more information." Credit card companies are businesses. Businesses will make any decision that makes them money. So does it make them money to cancel your account? It's a simple cost-benefit analysis: you having an account with them will probably give them some benefit for very little cost to them. The only real cost associated with an open account is someone who uses the card but doesn't pay, but they're pretty sure you won't be doing that. Close the account.  The age doesn't outweigh the fact that you have to pay for the card.  It would be one thing if the credit line was a couple thousand but showing the credit bureaus that you are staying away from the $425.00 doesn't really make them think you are any more trustworthy with your available credit.  Utilization matters when you are staying away from much larger chunks of your available credit (across all cards). "Thanks for the reply man. Yeah it literally says ""closed"" next to the accou t name. But we finally got ahold of someone, I guess they close your account whenever you have $0 in it and the account should open again 1-2 business days after the direct deposit tries to go into her account. At least that's what the lady said.   She hates this bank but we live in a small town and there's just not many options in terms of banking here.  Thanks for the help though man I appreciate it!" A credit balance can happen any time you have a store return, but paid the bill in full. It's no big deal. Why not just charge the next gas purchase or small grocery store purchase, to cycle it through?  Yes - unused cards can get canceled by the bank, and that can hurt your credit score. In the US anyway. I'm guessing it's the same system or similar in Canada. Please realize that your issuer can close the account for any number of reasons.  Inactivity is one, as having a credit line open costs them money and if you never charge anything, the company doesn't get any transaction fees from vendors nor does the company get to charge you any interest. An occasional charge is likely to keep your card from being closed automatically, but it is not a guarantee. Another reason they may close the account is that you have other bad marks show up on your credit score, or their criteria for offering you the card change so you no longer match their target demographic. I have a credit card issued by my credit union that I have not used for a couple of years. They will not close the card account because my other accounts are still very profitable for them. If I were not an otherwise profitable customer, I wouldn't be surprised if they closed my credit card account. If you are serious about keeping the account open, you should probably have more than a trivial amount of usage. I used square in the past for personal yard sale and they did not transfer balance to my bank acct because they told me it was against their policy and I had to have a business license that they could either refund the credit cards i process or keep the money. So they kept it I never got it back. I don't recommend anybody to use square. "Executive summary: It sounds like the merchant just did an authorization then cancelled that authorization when you cancelled the order, so there was never an actual charge so you'll never see an actual refund and there's no money to ""claim"". More detail: From your second paragraph, it sounds like they just did an authorization but never posted the transaction. A credit card authorization is basically the merchant asking your credit card company ""Does sandi have enough credit to pay this amount and if so please reserve that amount for a bit."" The authorization will decrease the total credit you have available on the card, but it's not actually a charge, so if your billing cycle ends, it won't show up on your statement. Depending on which company issued your credit card, you may be able to see the authorization online, usually labelled something like ""Pending transactions"". Even if your credit card company doesn't show pending transactions, you'll see a decrease in your available credit, however you shouldn't see an increase in your balance. The next step, and the only way the original merchant gets paid, is for the merchant to actually post a transaction to your card. Then it becomes a real charge that will show up on your next credit card statement and you'll be expected to pay it (unless you dispute the charge, but that's a different issue). If the charge is for the same amount as the authorization, the authorization will go away (it's now been converted to an actual charge). If the amounts are different, or the merchant never posts a transaction, the authorization will be removed by your credit card company automatically after a certain amount of time. So it sounds like you placed the order, the merchant did an authorization to make sure you could pay for it and to reserve the money, but then you cancelled the order before the merchant could post the transaction, so you were never really charged for it. The merchant then cancelled the authorization (going by the start of your third paragraph). So there was never an actual transaction posted, you were never charged, and you never really owed any money. Your available credit went down for a bit, but now should be restored to what it was before you placed the order. You'll never see an actual refund reflected on your credit card statement because there was no actual transaction." Check with your bank, usually a statement is either at the same day of month (e.g.: every 15th of the month), or every 30 days (e.g: March 15th, April 14th, May 14th, so forth). From my experience, most credit cards use the same day of month strategy. Keep in mind that if the day is not a business day (e.g.: weekend), the statement is closed either the previous or the next business day. I think you are overcomplicating the scenario by assuming a benefit that doesn't exist. Assume an employee earns 50k, before considering the MSP. The corporation wants to cover the MSP. They have two options: increase the salary to $50,900, or keep the salary the same and pay for the MSP directly. Both options increase the employee's taxable income by $900. Both options decrease the corporation's income by $900. Net tax for each is unchanged. *Note - I couldn't find any specific reference to the MSP in income tax documentation on either BC Finance's or CRA's website. I am assuming that it is treated as a regular cash benefit, though I am not 100% convinced this is the case. If I am wrong in this please provide a comment below.