old accounts on my cr

No Marvin old credit cards having 0 balance will not hurt your score. Rather it will helpful in enabling you to have a long credit history and increase the amount of credit that is available. And help in preventing the debt to credit limit balance from going high.

I would say that if there are too many such accounts then you may very well close some of those accounts and avoid fraudulent activities on them.

For closing these accounts you should contact the creditor but if some are now not reachable then dispute that entry with the bureau. If bureau does not find any information about the creditor then they will remove it from your CR.

Miller

"there are many credit card accounts appearing on my CR which are 10 to 15 yrs. old of stores which by now closed down or which I cannot locate now. so should I have them deleted from my CR and do these small zero balance accounts going to hurt my rating in any way?"
Closing the accounts will be a good idea but don't close all of them at one go. It can result in increasing your ratio of debt to available credit, which can have negative affect rather than helping you in any way.

Hi Marvin


One other negative about keeping too many accounts open is that it can create an impression that this person is fond of taking up too much credit.

So you need to be selective.

And keep open only those credit cards which show a favorable status. Also do not hurry with closing the cards, for the reason others have just mentioned.

Hi Marvin,

It's not that zero balance accounts will always affect your credit score. You may refer to a previous discussion on Can zero balance affect credit-rating to get some more idea on this issue.

Thanks,
Jerry