How to Remove Late Payments on Credit Report

Your credit score will suffer if your credit report has records of late payments. Your payment history greatly affects your score. There are a few ways to get late payments removed from your report; but first, check out the effects of late payments on your score. A single late payment on your credit report can have a huge negative impact.

A late credit card payment, car payment, mortgage payment, or any other late payment can decrease your FICO score by 90 to 110 points. With time, the effect of the late payment lessens until it expires. Nevertheless, if the negative account is on your report, creditors will still be able to see it. The late payments appear as 30, 60, 90, or 120+ days late.

The various degrees of delinquency affect your score differently, the later the payment, the bigger the damage. Recent late payments affect your score more than older ones. A creditor reports a late payment when it is 30 days overdue. Some creditors may choose not to report at all while others will report when you close your account.

If the payment is late by 90 days or more, your credit score will suffer more. It may even be reported as a charge-off if your lender sells the outstanding debt to a collection agency. The amount you owe does not matter, a late payment of $60 has the same effect as a late payment of $6000. A late payment will stay on your report for seven years.

Fortunately, this does not mean that you must wait seven years to establish credit. Your credit score will begin to rise again steadily, and you can even get a late payment permanently removed from your report.  You can get a late payment updated to “never late” or removed completely. There are a few simple ways to do this.

The approach you decide to go with depends on the relationship you have with your creditor, your credit history, and the amount of effort you are willing to put into the process. You have options.

Requesting A Goodwill Adjustment is ideal if your relationship with your creditor is good.

Requesting a goodwill adjustment means asking the lender to remove the late payment as a goodwill gesture since you have been a great client.

Write a letter to the creditor explaining why you are late and why you need the late payment removed. Signing up for automatic payments may prompt the creditor to agree to remove the late payment.

Both of you win here in that, the creditor is assured of timely payment and your credit report will be one less negative account. Check the late payment information for any inaccuracies.

Then file a dispute by sending a hard copy letter to the credit bureaus. They are required by law to carry out an investigation. Seek the help of a professional credit repair company.

There are good credit repair companies. This is a great option if you have no time or you have some money to spare. or you can find the sample letters in the book below.