Your goal is to remove those pesky late payments from your credit report. It’s a smart move. Late payments weigh heavy on your credit score. On top of that, late payments look horrible to creditors or landlords who want to make sure you won’t be late paying them as well. You can’t blame them, don’t you expect your employer to pay you on time?
When it comes to late payments, I found some good information on other sites, but NONE of them put the advice in the proper order. The proper order saves you COUNTLESS hours of time and increases your chances of removal. This is why I decided to write the post, as I have a personal policy to never blog unless I am offering information that can’t be found elsewhere.
Since we’re trying not to waste time, I’ll get off my soapbox and get to the process…
Step 1: Dispute the late payment with the Credit Reporting Agencies
This is first due to one simple fact: it only takes a few minutes. To dispute the late payment you need to get a copy of your current credit reports. At the end of your report there is a section for disputing information, click the link and complete the dispute process online.
I’m not going to tell you to lie, but for the dispute to work you must say the information is inaccurate. Have you paid the bill on time before? Were you simply confused on which month you were late? You don’t even need an excuse, you just need to make them prove it’s accurate. I’m just letting you know how I justified disputing information that I wasn’t sure was accurate.
After you finish the dispute, just wait to see the results. The creditor has 30 days to provide documentation that proves the late payment is accurate. If they don’t meet the deadline or the proof, your late payment is removed. This is definitely the easiest step to take and succeeds more often than you would think. Buuut, if that doesn’t work…
Step 2: Demonstrate hardship caused by the late payment
Some say disputing the account prior to negotiating or asking for a hardship adjustment is a bad move. Why? They say the creditor will see your dispute and be less likely to be lenient with you. It’s true, if you don’t know how to make it part of your hardship. How is that possible?
You need to bring it up to them, before they bring it up to you. You do this by including it as part of your sob story. Your goal is to make the agent feel bad about your life situation. For me, the truth worked the best, or a slightly exaggerated version of it. The truth always sounds more real, don’t be embarrassed by negative things that have happened in your past, it will actually make you feel good to utilize these experiences to help accomplish your goals. Make sure to include a reason why the dispute was made, such as:
** Disclaimer: I’m not telling you to lie, so make this story true to your situation **
“I have to tell you something else that I can’t believe happened, when I was researching information to fix my credit online, I hired someone who said they would fix my credit report for $29. Do you know what they did? They went through and disputed ALL of my accounts saying that I didn’t open them!! It was the worst mistake I ever made, can you believe they can get away with doing that? I thought they were going to negotiate down my payments, not lie and say I don’t owe the money. I guess it’s a lesson learned, but it actually made my credit worse which is why I’m calling now to see if…“
Obviously don’t just read the script above, it won’t work word for word, but you get the message. See how we just flipped around the failed dispute to work in your benefit?
Step 3: Negotiate Removal Of Your Late Payment with the Creditor
After you’ve tried asking for removal due to hardship, the next step is negotiating. Hopefully you wrote down the names of the people you talked to when asking them to remove the late payment due to hardship. You want to ask for the person who was the nicest to you when you spilled your guts about how hard your life is.
Start by reminding them how much you appreciate them listening and trying to help you the last time you spoke. Also ask if they remember you, they will say yes no matter what. This help’s establish a quick relationship with your agent so they are more likely to help you…
Quickly remind them of how much this late payment is negatively affecting your life, but this time offer something in return. You need to know what they want from you, is it to pay down your debt, not be late, pay the account in full, etc.
If your need help figuring this out: If the account is open, they want timely payments. Closed account, they want to be paid off.
Tell your agent what you have to offer based off what you can afford or follow through with and what you think they want. Or better yet, if you’ve developed a relationship with your agent, ask them what you would need to do to have it removed?
As long as you continue to build your relationship with the phone agent, they will be more likely to give you the advice of what to offer to get the late payment removed.
TIP: NEVER GET ANGRY AT THEM FOR ANY REASON. It doesn’t help you accomplish anything!
Step 4: Repeat the steps above until your goal is accomplished
If you haven’t accomplished your goal by now, it’s NOT time to just wait. BE PERSISTENT. As long as you are cordial on the phone with them every time, sooner or later someone is going to want you to go away, how do you think they do that? By removing the late payment. 🙂
Step 5: Take a shortcut, skip steps 1-4
If steps 1 through 4 seem like too much work, and I can’t blame you since it is a tedious process, or maybe you have more serious credit problems than a few late payments, then luckily there is a solution for you too! It’s called hire a professional law firm who will do the dirty work for you while staying within the law, and it’s not expensive like you would expect to pay for anything that involves lawyers or law firms (we’re talking under $100!). I know this is what I would do if I could do it all over again with my own credit repair process, but you do have to be careful about who you hire, because a bad choice here can do more harm than good.
I have done some extensive research on this and can say that Lexington Law is one of the most respected in the industry and they will take good care of you. I have met with representatives at Lexington Law and am confident that their practices are effective and within the laws, so they aren’t going anywhere and will be with you throughout the credit repair process. Tap here to give them a call at (844) 259-3380, or tap here to visit www.LexingtonLaw.com, you will get a FREE credit consultation, which includes your credit report summary and credit score. If you decide to hire them, you will also get a personal credit advisor and credit repair game plan, tools to track your success 24/7, credit monitoring, identity theft insurance and more. Plus, there are no contracts or hidden fees.
If you haven’t already, check out my other blog post: Five REQUIRED Steps To Start Your Credit Repair Process
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