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Auto Primary Tradelines: What’s Real and What’s Risky

I sold authorized user tradelines on my own credit cards, and one of the questions that kept landing in my inbox is about auto primary tradelines — usually from someone who’s been told they need one on their report before a car purchase will go through. An auto primary tradeline is an auto loan reported on your credit file with you as the primary borrower: your name on the loan, your payment history, your responsibility. That’s the simple part. The complicated part is the market that has grown around the phrase, because a lot of people typing it into Google aren’t looking for a definition — they’re looking to buy one. And that’s where I owe you a straight answer, even if it costs me a sale (it usually doesn’t — more on that below).

auto primary tradelines
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5 Minute Credit Score Trick: What It Actually Does

Every time someone talks about a “5 minute credit score trick,” they usually mean one of two things: paying down a balance quickly, or adding an authorized user tradeline. The “5 minute” part is actually accurate — the setup itself takes minutes. The results don’t. That distinction matters, and I want to be upfront about it before getting into what actually works.

5 minute credit score trick

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Informative Research Credit Inquiry

At some point while reviewing your credit report, you’ll probably see a list of inquiries — some labeled “hard” and some labeled with terms like “informative research credit inquiry” or variations on that phrase. The hard ones you likely recognize: those are from credit applications. The informative research ones are different, and understanding what they are (and what they aren’t) is worth a few minutes.

informative research credit inquiry

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Does Chase Report Authorized Users? (Yes, for Adults)

Buyers ask me this pretty regularly: does Chase actually report authorized users? The short answer is yes — Chase reports adult authorized users to all three major credit bureaus. But there’s a nuance here that most posts miss entirely, and it matters depending on why you’re asking.

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Tradeline Deletion: What It Means and What to Do

I get messages from buyers who are confused — sometimes panicked — when a tradeline they paid for disappears from their credit report. “It’s gone” is usually how they put it. What they don’t realize is that there are two completely different things that “tradeline deletion” can mean, and the path forward is totally different depending on which one they’re experiencing.

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