Late payments affecting FICO score...

[Anonymous]

I deployed out of country in May 2001 and somehow none of the payments I had written checks for (credit cards, utilities, etc) were ever received.... Checks were never cashed and I never had a problem with an identity theft.  Best I can guess is that the entire stack of mail was taken from my mailbox... 

I got everything squared away and paid for upon my return... Still, I've got 6 negative reports on my credit report (all either from May or June 2001) showing a past due of 30 days.  Heck, 4 of the 6 are now closed! 

My question:  Will these late payments forever haunt my FICO score or do they drop off after 7 years like bankruptcies?  My FICO is close to breaking that 700 mark and it'd be nice if those bad remarks were removed from consideration....

[haulingthescoreup]

They do drop off after seven years, and their impact is supposed to be fading by now. (I posted a question about this on the FICO scoring thread.) But this is a situation that begs for GW (goodwill) letters to be written, even on the closed accounts. Type goodwill or GW in the search box on this screen, and you'll get a ton of hits. Good luck!