Goodwill Letter to Wells Fargo Home Mortgage was Unsuccessful

[Anonymous]

I recently sent a goodwill letter to Wells Fargo Home Mortgage.  In 2015, I was hit with several thousand dollars worth of medical bills and missed a total of 7 payments on my home loan.  After three missed payments, I was briefly able to catch-up and make my account current.  Then, I missed 4 additional payments, so the most I was ever past due was 120 days.  In January of 2016, I was able to pay my full past due balance, which was roughly $10,000.  Little did I know that I could have potentially used this time to negotiate the removal of these late payments in my credit report, because Wells Fargo would have preffered a current account rather than a foreclosure.  Since that time, I have made all my payments on time and have saved enough to make two additional payments (if I were ever to encounter money issues in the future).  

I recently sent a goodwill letter to Wells Fargo and prompty received this reply:  

"While I understand you'd like us to remove information displayed on your credit report, and we recognize that circumstances beyond your control may have impacted your ability to make your payments, we're required by the Fair Credit Reporting Act to report all account information accurately.  We've determined that we provided accurate information to the consumer reporting agencies and will not be making any adjustments."

My understanding is that "the Fair Credit Reporting Act does not demand that all accounts be reported, only that any account that is reported be reported accurately."  

Does anyone know what I should do/try next?  What recourse do I have?  This is my first time with a mortgage and I admit that I initially handled things badly, but I am going to have a tough time over the next 7 years until this negative mark is removed from my credit history.  Any help and/or advice that you could give me is greatly appreciated. 

[Anonymous]

The Saturation Technique:

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Rebuilding-Your-Credit/The-Saturation-Technique-Best-GW-adjustment-o...

I was able to finally receive a GW adjustment from Wells Fargo after many months of using this technique.  If you have any questions please let me know.

[Fleuriste]

Thanks for linking this thread!  I've been butting my head against a wall with WF over a 30 day late.  I'm going to try this and see if I get better results.  Are you willing to share your WF contacts?

[Anonymous]

Wells Fargo has the following pisition - "we're required by the Fair Credit Reporting Act to report all account information accurately")

I have seen an argument to this position on this forum:

"Please consider that the Fair Credit Reporting Act does not demand that all accounts be reported, only that any account that is reported be reported accurately. Therefore, a company does have legal discretion and permission to remove any account it chooses from the credit report. I’m hoping that ————- will do that in my case for this account."

I do not suppose this argument would work in my case, as I would not want to remove an entire mortgage account from my credit report.  What do you all think?  Are theere any other arguments to Wells Fargo's position?

[Anonymous]

I'm using the following language in my goodwill letter to WF regarding the fact that banks are NOT required to report negative info to the credit bureaus:

Because of the circumstances surrounding this late payment, my otherwise exceptional payment history over the last six years, and because the Fair Credit Reporting Act (§623.7.E.), regarding negative information states: “No provision of this paragraph shall be construed as requiring a financial institution … to furnish negative information about the customer to a consumer reporting agency”, I would be very grateful if you would remove this late payment from my credit report.