Tenía una cuenta desde el 2002 hasta el 2006.

I would have expected here "Tuve una cuenta..." as it is for a fixed time period in the past with a definite ending.

Hola Steven, Here is something from Learning Spanish Like Crazy that also uses the imperfect rather than the preterite: Yo esperaba que ustedes guardaran sus cosas en el casillero. This was translated as I hoped you guys put your things away in the locker and that was quite clear to me except that I intially wondered why esperaba instead of esperé. It's not a mistake in the lesson, which is about the imperfect subjunctive and most of the time the dependent clause in the different examples used the preterite. The D. Richmond verb book says the imperfect is used when referring to an action that took place over an extended period of time and I think that's why "tenía" was used. Also "hoped" is kinda hard to pin down so I guess that's why "esperaba" was used. Saludos, Ricardo

Hola Ricardo, Interesting. In your example, I would have expected to see "esperaba" there (as it is a state of emotion/expectation). "Tener" on the other hand seemed a bit more concrete to me, sort of like "Yo viví en Cuba dos años." Anyway, I understand that subtleties such as this (at least for me!) will take time and experience to fully get straight. Gracias! Saludos, Steven