@Jlbt wrote:
I just contacted capital one (through their customer support chat) and politely asked if I could get all of my past due alerts taken off my credit score. The lady was very helpful and said "I can file a dispute for past late charges, they will be sent to the 3 bureaus and you should see them take effect in 30-90 days". I'm very new at this and this was my first attempt to get anything removed from my score. The "dispute" threw me off a little and I just wanted to make sure that is what I needed to happen from you guys. I documented the whole conversation. Basically my question is, will this remove all my late capital one payments from my credit report? Also wanted to say thank you to this forum two days in and I have gained so much information!
Hi. Welcome to the forum. I know you are new here and want to have a perfect credit score. The thing is that there is a catch. There are several people represented on the forums in the website. There are people like you who are consumers who want good credit, there are loan officers, people from the Credit Bureaus. Credit reports help lenders to decide who to lend to by predicting the probablility that different people will honor their financial obiligations, ie pay back money if they are lent it. If every person who spends a half hour online and writes a letter can get every mistake just to disappear from their credit reports then what value does this system have? If everybody could just get every mistake they make just deleted like it never happened then how are loan officers able to figure out who to loan money to? Scores wouldn't mean anything and having a good credit score would not mean that you could get great rates and products if this were the case. How are they supposed to stay in business so they can give you a credit card or a car loan?
I know you will still try to get the rest of the lates removed from your reports.Of course and I agree it is wroth a try, I just want you to understand why it is not so easy and just propose to you that it is a good thing that this system works the way it does. You can improve your scores and have good credit without compromising your integrity. This site is not about giving the public tricks and ways to scam the system. That is for others. We are here to learn about how the system works and how to excel with in the rules. Thus if the lates on your report are legitimate in that you were late on paying your bills, then they will be hard to get removed. If you really think that you have changed since then and won't be late again, then I would suggest when you write a good will letter to Capital One or talk to them on the phone that you advocate for yourself by telling them just that.
I know you want to improve your scores like everyone else. I just want to maybe have you think a little bit about how the whole system works. It shouldn't be real easy to get stuff removed that is legitimately on your report. I for example came on the forums and tried really hard to get some lates removed from an old closed credit card. I was unable to get them removed. I accept that. I made mistakes, I was a bad credit risk.
Now because of bad scores I have had to change my behaviours, change how I think about things. I am slowly becoming a better credit risk, someone who is a good person to loan money to. I have to wait for my mistakes to age off and my score is getting better but not overnight. You will find elsewhere on the net some techniques which are advocated by some which this site would consider unethical. I tend to agree with them about these things. I Believe in the credit system as it is set up because by educating myself I have learned how to successfully have a good score.
The key to having a good score is to develop good habits of not going into debt that you can't afford to pay back, paying your bills ontime, honoring your obligations. I would recommend focussing on developing those skills because even if you can successfully get a couple mistakes removed, there will be more in the future if you don't develop these skills. It takes a very short period of time to mess up a credit report and a longer time to get back a good score. A couple quick fixes are no substitute for developing good credit habits and sticking with them. Good luck.
