Late payments are not created equal; a 90 day and 120 day late pay will cause your score to be dramatically lowered. However with a 30 day or 60 day late pay it will cause very minimal damage to your score.
This mark can be deleted by the lender as a way to keep your business and keep you happy. We suggest you contact the lender and ask them to delete the mark.
We suggest a phone call and sending them a written letter with a brief explanation as to what happened. Additionally it will go a long way if you are polite and respectful during your communications.
A 90 or 120 day mark is much harder to erase. If you account is still open, we suggest you contact the lender.
It is a good idea to make sure your account is up to date before making this request. Typically if the lender sees a history of late payments they will not remove it.
If the lender is not willing to remove the mark we suggest that you dispute it with the bureaus. You can do this be writing a dispute letter and sending it to each bureau or you can hire a service to do this for you.
This mark will stay on your report for a maximum of seven years. Additionally your account will go to collections after 180 days or six months of delinquency.
The reason a creditor is able to remove this mark from your file is because they report to the bureaus monthly. Thus all they have to do is not report this negative mark, the next month.
If your account is not in good standing, it will be very difficult to convince the lender to remove the mark from your report. Also there is a lot of information that says a negative item must stay on your report 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 we suggest contacting the lender to remove this item. If that can not be done then you should dispute it directly with the bureaus, through a dispute letter.
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