Cleaning Late Payments from a Credit Report

Depending on how late a creditor reports you were on a payment, even a single late payment on your credit reports can do serious damage to your credit score. A lone 90-day late payment recorded on your credit reports can hurt your credit score as much as a collection account, judgment, or tax lien.

30 and 60 day late payments don't make as big of an impact on your credit score, but if you have a number of these negative listings listed on your credit reports, it shouldn't come as a surprise when your credit isn't as good as you would prefer it to be.

Whether a late payment is reported as 30, 60, 90, or 120 days past due, your credit score would probably be better if it didn't show up on your credit reports. Just about everyone would prefer to have this damaging listing deleted, but few realize there is something 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 fixing your credit. For starters, under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), you have the right to dispute with the credit bureaus 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 you feel give others an unfair impression of your credit worthiness; including late payments.

If a credit bureau dispute doesn't result in a removal or if the reported late payment doesn't 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 whenever they have reason to do so. On occasion, simply as a result of you asking nicely, they will agree to stop reporting a negative item. If this doesn't do the job, there are more confrontational tactics you can employ that make use of your rights under consumer protection acts 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 can make use of their knowledge and experience to assist you in working towards your credit goals.

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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