The simplest approach is to simply ask your lender to remove the late payment from your credit report. That should delete the information at the source so that it doesn't come back later. If you find a late, incorrect or old payment on one of your credit reports, you can file a dispute with the credit bureau that issues the report. You can also dispute the error with the creditor who sent the information to the agency, such as the lender, credit card issuer, or collection agency.
Late payments can stay on your credit reports for up to seven years. If you believe that a late payment has been reported in error, you can dispute the information with Experian. You can also contact the original creditor directly to express your concern and ask them to investigate. If they determine that they reported the late payment in error, they can contact the credit reporting companies to have it withdrawn.
When filing a late payment dispute, the creditor will need to investigate the situation within 30 days. If the creditor believes that the late payment information is correct, it will not be deleted or updated. However, if the creditor agrees that the information reported is incorrect, they will need to inform the credit bureau that the details need to be updated or deleted. In addition, all credit bureaus that received the information must be notified.
In a goodwill letter, you ask the creditor who reported your late payments to remove the derogatory mark from your credit reports. You may have had an unexpected change of circumstances or financial difficulties. Whatever the situation, its purpose is to explain why you failed to meet your payments and why the creditor should delete them from the report. Typically, your credit can recover from an isolated payment 30 days late in a few months, as long as you otherwise have good credit and a long history of paying on time.
If you're reading this and you've already reported delinquency on your credit report, it's obviously too late to prevent negative marks from appearing on your credit history. Once a late payment is reported to one of the credit bureaus (Experian, TransUnion, or Equifax), it can stay on your credit report for up to seven years. If the reporting creditor is unable to verify the accuracy of the disputed item, the credit reporting agency will remove that item from its claim. Having late payments on your credit report could seriously affect your credit rating and you could even end up being unable to get certain benefits because of it.
Payments that are less than 30 days late will not affect your credit report or credit rating, although you may be subject to late fees or other penalties from your lender. Depending on factors such as your credit history and rating, how severe the late payment was, and how long ago it occurred, it can seriously damage your credit rating. If late payments are weighing you down, 7 years is an incredible amount of time to wait for them to be removed from your credit report, especially if you're working to buy a car or a new home, or if your job search isn't going well because of your poor credit history. If you could send a letter of goodwill that causes late payments to be completely eliminated from your credit reports, you could enjoy a healthier credit score for years to come.
Depending on the credit bureau that provides the credit report with the late payment listed, it may be highlighted in some way (for example, with a different symbol or code than what you see for one-off payments). If a late payment is incorrectly reported on your credit report, you should take steps to dispute the incorrect information with the three credit bureaus Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. If the account is already in the process of being collected, deleting it from your credit report probably won't increase your credit rating.
Credit repair
experts, such as those at Lexington Law, can eliminate inaccurate negative information on your behalf..
