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Depending on how late a creditor reports you were on a payment, even a single late payment on your credit reports can do some serious damage to your credit rating. A lone 90-day late payment reported to the credit bureaus can be as detrimental to your credit score as a collection account, judgment, or tax lien. 30 and 60 day late payments don't hurt your credit score as much, but if you have multiple delinquencies listed on your credit reports, it shouldn't come as a surprise when your credit isn't as good as you would like it to be. Whether a late payment is reported as 30, 60, 90, or 120 days past due, your credit score would probably be higher if it did not show up on your credit reports at all. Just about everyone would prefer to have this damaging listing cleaned up, but few realize there is anything they can do about it. What they are not aware of is that there are steps you can take in an effort to remove late payments from your credit reports. In fact, Lexington Law, a consumer advocacy law firm with 18 years of experience helping over 1/2 million Americans work to improve their credit, reports that their clients had over 140,000 late payments removed from their credit reports in 2008. You have a number of options when it comes to repairing your credit. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, you have the right to request the credit bureaus verify any items in your credit reports you feel may be inaccurate, untimely, misleading, incomplete, ambiguous, unverifiable, biased or unclear (known as "questionable" items). Essentially, as the name of the act implies, you have the right to question any items in your credit reports you feel give lenders, insurance providers, and others an unfair or inaccurate impression of your credit worthiness; including late payments. If your credit bureau dispute is unsuccessful or if the reported late payment does not fit the definition of a questionable negative item, there are still options available to you. Your creditors have the ability to remove the items they have added to your credit reports. On occasion, simply as a result of you asking nicely, they will agree to stop reporting a negative item. If a friendly request doesn't do the job, there are a number of more confrontational tactics you can employ based on your rights under consumer protection statutes such as the Fair Credit Billing Act and the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. It may not be easy, but with time, effort, and proper knowledge, you may be able to remove late payments from your credit reports. Of course, if you do not have the time or the desire to attempt repairing your own credit, there are a number of reputable credit repair companies who will use their knowledge and experience to assist you in working towards achieving your credit goals.
Credit Repair Thoughts: http://www.creditrepairthoughts.org
Since 1991, Lexington Law's credit repair services have been helping clients legally dispute the questionable negative items in their credit reports. In 2008, Lexington Law's clients saw over 140,000 late payments removed from their credit reports (combined removals for all three credit bureaus).
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