Thursday, June 7, 2012

At least I tried?

Two years ago I made a huge mistake with my one of my credit cards, this resulted in me now having a pretty repulsive looking credit score. What did I do that was so wrong? I did not pay my credit card bill for over 3 months, I wrote about this on an early post.

After doing some research I learned that this information will only go away from your credit report after 7 years. I also learned that there is something you could try to do to get this information removed, and that is to write a letter to the creditor requesting that the late payments be removed out of goodwill. If you were experiencing serious hardship during the time that you made the late payments and now currently you are in good standing you can write to them explaining that and ask that in their goodwill they can remove the bad marks.

Well, during the time that I made those late payments I was going through some personal tribulations. One major one was me being in the middle of a divorce which besides leaving me broke led me to have to move to a different city and that took some time settling in. I included all of this info in my letter and sent it off crossing my fingers hoping this would work.

The reason why I would like for this to be removed from my credit report is because I am looking to buy a house within the next few years and my credit score is horrendous. Also, I just got financing on a used car and my interest rate is out of control! I would love to be able to refinance it.

I got a response letter in the mail today and what did it say? "After reviewing your account we have determined that the information in regards to your payment dates is accurate". So basically, they did not remove the bad credit remarks from my credit report. I know this may even seem naive a bit, but I refuse to see it that way.  I screwed up a few years ago and this was me trying to see if I could catch a break somehow, well turns out I couldn't. I'm okay with that though, I will continue to pay my crazy interest rates for a few more years knowing that I will not ever make the same silly mistakes I made in the past again.

Nancy,

9 comments:

  1. I'm really sorry, that must be so frustrating! I call these AFGE...another f*ucking growth experience!

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  2. Yes, I definitely have some growing pains from this one. I knew sending this letter was a huge shot in the dark but at least I'm happy I tried...

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  3. I've been told my many to try again every six months. If you keep making payments on time, they'll finally relent (hopefully).

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    1. I never heard that! Thanks, I will definitely mail this in again in 6 months - I thought it was a one shot deal.

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  4. Well that just sucks! :( Like AverageJoe sad, I'd stay on top of your payments & try again in 6 months!

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  5. Kudos to you for trying! I didn't know you could even make that request...I'm going to file a request with one of my past creditors. I feel the blemish put on my report was in bad taste anyways...it's a long, personal story, but I feel I have a reasonable reason to have it removed. Thanks so much for the tip and I hope they change their mind in six months!

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  6. That's rough. Keep trying! It can"t hurt you.

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