Remove Late Payments From Your Credit
How to remove a late payment from your credit. A 30 or 60 day late pay is relatively easy to remove, however a 90 or 120 day late pay will be harder to erase.
Late payments are not equal; a 90 day or 120 day late pay will cause a large amount of damage and is seen as a very negative mark by lenders. However a 30 day or 60 day late payment will not do much damage.
You can remove a 30 and 60 day late pay from your report by contacting the lender and asking them to erase it. Frequently they will do this in order to keep you as a customer and in their good graces.
A phone call and a letter including the reason is the most effective method. Also be respectful and nice to them because they do not have to remove this mark.
A 90 and 120 day late pay is much more difficult to remove. However if your account is still open then you should contact the lender,
and ask for removal of the mark.
It is a good idea to make sure your account is up to date before asking them to remove the item from your report. The lender will often look at your payment history to see if late payments are common with your account.
If you can not get the mark removed we suggest you dispute it directly with the credit bureaus. This is done by creating a dispute letter and mailing it to each bureau or you can hire a service to do this on your behalf.
This item will be on your report for a maximum of seven years. Additionally your account will be charged off after 180 days of delinquency.
A lender can remove this mark because they report monthly to the bureaus and can choose what to report to them. Thus if they do not report your late payment the next month then it will not be on your credit history.
You will find it very difficult to have the lender erase this mark if your account is not up to date. Additionally there is information that claims negative items on your credit must stay there for seven years.
This is false, seven years is the maximum amount of time most negative items can remain on your report. The Fair Credit Reporting Act passed by Congress made this law. There is no minimum amount of time a negative item has to be on your report.
In sum if you can not negotiate removal of the mark directly with the lender you should dispute it with the bureaus. This is done through a dispute letter written yourself or by hiring a service to do it on your behalf.
