How Can You Get Late Payments Off Your Credit Report?
Late payments are other negative items that might be affecting your credit score and this is how to get them off.
Late payments on credit reports have a major impact on credit scores since they indicate that one has a bad habit of being late in paying his debts. Even if you take a long to pay your bills, information about them can remain on your credit report for up to seven years. Fortunately, you can have these removed earlier than that, which is good news. Here are some useful strategies you can try to help eliminate late payments from your credit report:
Ask Nicely Although this method can be time-consuming and may not necessarily work, you should call your creditors and nicely ask them to delete the late payments. Apologize for the delay in payments by arguing that they were owing to special circumstances like illness, loss of a job, or other circumstances that compelled the borrower to seek help from relatives. Lastly, be honest and inquire whether the other party would be receptive to forgiving those late payments. Most of the creditors will be able to accept your explanation and allow you to pay because you have always been a good client apart from the delayed payments.
Provide Documentation To increase your odds of having those late payments erased, substantiate the reasons for any delay by offering documentation. For instance, if the emergency is a serious medical situation, you may provide medical invoices or doctors’ letters. If you lost your job, provide the documents as proof of income loss during the period of joblessness. These documents will indeed bolster your case considerably.
Describe the extent of the effects that have taken place around you. It is also important to describe how the delayed payments have negatively affected them and caused significant damage to their credit rating when it comes to credit or loans. This information may be useful for lenders and creditors who might decide to give you a second chance knowing that negative information affects you in a very disadvantageous manner. If you are behind on a large amount of money such as a mortgage or auto loan, stress that one or two negative payment history records a few years back are pulling you down.
Offer a Goodwill Gesture As a bargaining tool, you may agree to pay the debts in full, sign up for automatic payments, or promise to be a model customer in exchange for deleting the negative items from your credit report. The goal is to combine an action plan that is pleasing to the creditor whilst being favorable to yourself. It also ensures that the company will treat you as an ideal customer in the future to encourage them to accept your business.
Report Your Account Status to Your Creditors to Indicate “Paid as Agreed” If the credit companies are willing to remove the late payments, this does not guarantee that the account will be reported as “paid as agreed. ” To gain the most from the improved score, ask whether they can report the account as “paid as agreed” after they have received payments in retaliation to the late payments made in the past.
I also want to know the disputing information with the credit reporting agencies. Should the efforts to reach out to the creditors prove futile, you can file a dispute with the major credit reporting bureaus- Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Where you dispute an item, the credit agencies must, under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, investigate the dispute within one month. To dispute an item, the consumer has to attach copies of the documents that support the disputed item and a letter requesting an investigation. Your creditor is then approached by the credit agency where the agency asks for confirmation of some details. Indeed, if the creditor cannot confirm that the payments were made untimely, the credit agency should delete the entries in your report. You can also claim that the indicated payments are uncreditworthy according to the credit reporting regulations, which state that negative items must be removed if they are more than seven years old (if bankruptcy is involved – ten years). Continue arguing if an item should not be reported anymore due to the age factor but still appears on the report.
Pay for Delete Agreement is a relatively new trend and should be used as a last resort when dealing with Internet trolls. You must be lucky to have the late payment deleted if you agree to pay off your outstanding balance. This is sometimes referred to as a pay-for-delete agreement. There are tried-and-true methods that work great, such as calling each of your creditors and asking them to remove the negative item once you pay the full amount owed. Do not pay any money until you have a written agreement signed by the party in question! Because debt collectors remain oriented toward the financial aspect of operations and revenue, they may be more willing to agree to a pay-for-delete proposal.
Finally, seek the services of a credit repair agency that knows how to negotiate pay for deletion on behalf of clients. They are ready to call your creditors and negotiate the official request for removal for a certain amount of money. However, you do not necessarily need to hire a credit repair service to negotiate pay for deletion; you can do it yourself. Pay for delete is an excellent strategy when it’s done properly since it allows you to eliminate negative items effectively.
It is important to note that having the late payments removed from your credit history, does not happen overnight. However, following the right procedures to get to your preferred credit score can be a great achievement. It is also important to check on your credit report now and then, to make sure there are no bad reports of late payments. Make sure to proceed with positive credit related behaviors and always pay all types of bills on time. However, there is no excuse for not having strong credit scores for those willing to learn, work hard, and dedicate time to rebuilding their scores.
Ready to boost your credit score? Call +1 888-804-0104 now for the best credit repair services near you! Our expert team is here to help you achieve financial freedom and improve your credit. Don't wait—get started today!