An authorized user trade-line is a revolving major credit card line where the credit card holder allows someone else to “piggyback” off of their good credit by adding them as an authorized user of that account. By doing so, this account will then show up on the authorized user or piggybacker’s credit report and give them the FICO scoring benefit of that account. Accounts that are a minimum of 3 years old, have perfect payment history, and less than 10% of the available credit being utilized give the maximum score benefit and in many cases can increase a qualified authorized user’s credit score as much as 30 to 60 points per tradeline.

Your credit score is a numerical calculation of your credit worthiness. When you purchase items or borrow money using credit, your lender sends details of the account and your payment history to the three credit bureaus: TransUnion, Experian and Equifax. Your information is then put into a complex formula to determine your FICO score, and that score represents your level of credit risk to new lenders when you apply for credit. The higher your score, the lower risk you represent and the higher your chances are for loan approval and preferred interest rates.
Your credit score is broken down into the following factors:

• 35% of your score is based on your payment history
• 30% of your score is based on your debt ratio, which is how much of your current available credit you are using.
• 15% of your score is based on the length of your credit history
• 10% of your score is based on new credit
• 10% of your score is based on the variety of the types of credit that you use (ie, revolving, installment, etc).

When you add an authorized user tradeline to your credit report, you are adding positive payment history, length of time you have established credit, and showing responsible use of credit by having an account with a low debt ratio. These are the factors that contribute to the 30 to 60 points average increase that we see with qualified authorized users.

Once we receive your agreement back, our standard processing time is between 2 and 4 weeks for the tradeline to show on your credit report. Once the tradeline has reported, you will immediately see your associated credit score increase. If you have a specific deadline and need to ensure that your line reports more quickly, we offer an expedited service for a 25% upcharge that will guarantee that the line is put onto your credit within 30 days.

You might notice that we use the words “qualified authorized user” when we talk about the specifics of how much your credit score can increase. While this program can work in many situations, it is not for everyone. There are a couple of important factors that must be taken into consideration when determining whether or not you are an ideal candidate for this program. The most important factor that we look at is your last 2 years of credit history. If you have no negative items such as late payments, charge off’s, repossessions, or liens that have reported as new delinquencies within the past 2 years, you can typically expect to see the higher end of a credit score increase. This is not to say that if you have had a few challenges in the past couple of years that you will not see an increase in your score, but it will be considered more of a gamble and it is possible that you will see less of a score increase than you had hoped. It is rare that we have seen someone not get any increase at all by adding one of our lines, but it can happen that the increase given is not enough to meet the specific goals of the user. Our credit experts are available to consult with you on your individual situation and to provide you with all the tools you need to be able to determine your own level of success vs. risk using our program.

You are required as part of your sign up to enroll in a credit monitoring service that pulls information from all 3 bureaus. The inquiries that you make through your monitoring service are considered soft inquiries and do not show on your report and will not lower your score like a hard inquiry might. We recommend Identity I Q as they pull from all 3 bureaus, offer 3 updates per month for a competitive fee, and tend to be the most consistent with providing you the most current information. We have had problems with a few of the other sites putting today’s date on older reports and thus not being able to confirm proper reporting, so if you don’t already have a monitoring service, at least look at them before making a decision.

The most common reason that an account doesn’t show on a credit report is a fraud alert or hold. Credit bureaus offer a service that will place a lock on your credit report so that nothing new can show up. This service can be requested by you the consumer, or if you or another agent have been working on your credit and they begin to see a lot of disputes come across on your report, the bureau can put the fraud alert on your report without notifying you. When we confirm your tradeline order, we will send you the best phone numbers to speak with a live person (not a frustrating automated line) who can confirm that you don’t have any fraud holds. If you do, in most cases it can be removed in 2 minutes on the same phone call. Having a fraud hold is not a big deal and won’t prevent us from getting your order started, but you will want to make sure that you have it removed within a week or two after signing up with us until you see the line on your report.

Other more rare factors that can delay your order are things like clerical errors, either on the credit card company or the bureau’s end. Also, when you fill out your order form, you want to make sure you carefully double check all the information, having a mis-spelling in your name or a number off on your Social Security Number can make it so that the line never posts, and while we will always replace it regardless of if it was your error, it will of course cause additional delay that can push your timeline outside of your original goals.

Because of the many factors that go into determining your full credit score, it is impossible to guarantee a specific credit score increase. Our credit consultants are always conservative when setting your expectations as our goal is to under-sell and over-deliver, but as the credit bureaus keep their scoring formulas tightly confidential, no company is able to guarantee a specific number for score increase. This said, we do offer written guarantees so that you can be assured we do everything possible on our end to ensure the best possible results. Our guarantee promises that our credit lines are seasoned credit lines with a minimum of 3 years, have perfect payment history, and less than 10% of the available credit being utilized. We also guarantee that our lines will report to a minimum of 2 out of the 3 credit bureaus within the contracted time (varied depending on standard vs. expedited). While 90% of the time our lines report to all 3 bureaus, there are occasionally factors outside of our control that can keep a line from hitting the 3rd bureau. If for whatever reason your line only hits one bureau, we will replace it at no charge, but our extremely competitive pricing is set to guarantee a minimum of 2. As most lenders take into account your mid-score, it should not lessen your ability to qualify for credit if your credit line reports to at least 2 bureaus.