Couple days late payment

[Anonymous]

I have a pending BT on my AMEX ED. Called it in last night(Thursday) and still haven't made the minimum payment due on Tuesday. If I'm a day or two late will anything bad happen?

[RobertEG]

Whatever "bad" might happen is governed by the terms of your account agreement.

Most account agreements specify that not making the minimum payment by the statement due date is a default, and thus permits assessing of late fees, reversion of any introductory interest rate to the default rate, etc.

However, credit reporting does not include lates as reportable to a CRA until they reach 30 days for more past the billing due date.

Thus, if you pay before the delinquency reaches 30 days from the billing due date, it will not be reportable to a CRA.

[Anonymous]

Aside from Amex hitting you with a late fee, you don't have much to worry about.  It won't be reported to the bureaus until it's 30 days late.  Keep in mind though that the creditor WILL keep records of you being late (even if you're less than 30 days late), which could be an issue in the future.  I had an account once where I had a single late payment reported to the CRAs and I contacted the creditor to request GW.  They researched my request and stated that I had been late several other times in making payments.  These periods of time were usually just a few days, but perhaps a week or longer once or twice.  Based on that behavior that they had on record, they denied my request for GW on the reported late payment.  Just something to keep in mind and this is an example of how outside of just fees being slightly late on your accounts could adversely impact you at some point down the line.

[Thomas_Thumb]

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@RobertEG wrote:

Whatever "bad" might happen is governed by the terms of your account agreement.

Most account agreements specify that not making the minimum payment by the statement due date is a default, and thus permits assessing of late fees, reversion of any introductory interest rate to the default rate, etc.

However, credit reporting does not include lates as reportable to a CRA until they reach 30 days for more past the billing due date.

Thus, if you pay before the delinquency reaches 30 days from the billing due date, it will not be reportable to a CRA.

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At one time you could detect under 30 day late payments by looking at a credit report. If a minimum payment was required but none was made => "short term late". I suspected TU may have tweaked their Fico 8 model to consider this as a scoring factor. TU reports used to include balance, amount paid and minimum due. That level of granularity can be used to detect transactor/revolver behavior as well as some short term lates.

However, someone who makes an interum payment, then later allows a balance to report but forgets to pay until after due date would have an undetectable short term late.

[Anonymous]

TT, when you say "at one time" specifically when are you talking?  I'm curious when this was and when it changed, if you are aware of that info.

[Thomas_Thumb]

BBS - If you have a TU credit report, take a look at your credit card summaries. At one time TU showed actual payments by month - in the last couple years that field only shows $0 or is blank.

I have 5 credit cards and one charge card listed on my TU report. Four of five cards used to report an amount paid each month. With this data you could compare amount paid against minimum due. If scheduled payment was greater than zero and amount paid showed zero, that would indicate a short term late payment. The payment information shows on monthly summaries in 2014 and 2015. Depending on the CC company, reporting of payment information (or at least listing of it) stopped in the May 2015 to July 2015 timeframe.

Note: In contrast, my EX credit report never showed payment info - it only shows "no data" for that field.

[Anonymous]

I decided to pay and avoid any potential penalties

[Anonymous]

That's the best thing to do. Wise choice!