What time of the month do creditors report new balances?

[Anonymous]

I am about to pay down several credit cards that are maxed out.   How will I know when they will report the new balances to the credit bureaus?   Should I dispute the balances or just wait on them to report them?

[haulingthescoreup]

Most of the time, they report on your statement date. This is NOT the due date. Your statement usually comes out 2 or 3 weeks before the balance on it is due. AmEx and HSBC report closer to the end of the month.

Remember that even though the creditors may have reported, the CRA's then have to update. TU has recently been in some sort of coma where they haven't updated anyone. My TU report didn't change for a month, until finally it started up again the other day, and others still haven't seen any changes.

I would never dispute with CCC's or CRA's just to get them to report your new balances, unless it has been far beyond the date one would normally expect. There is no point in looking for trouble. But if they should have long since updated, and they haven't, then "dispute balance" might be your only option. I have a J.Crew (WFNNB) that does this to me all the time. It's in the sock drawer now.

[Anonymous]

I wouldn't dispute. Probably faster to wait 25 days then open a dispute. Generally mine report what ever the balance was at the time the statement closed. So if I want my payments to show up on my CR next update I make a payment 5 days before the "closing date". Then I usually see the update on my CR 10 days after the closing date on EX, 20 days after on EQ and TU. Amex is different because they report a month behind for me.