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Wife has a Sears CC and used it to charge $11 a few months ago. It seems that Sears stopped sending statements by mail sometime last year, although we never requested
any change in the way statements were to be sent. I pay the bills, and because I never saw the statement, I didn't pay anything as I assumed we had no balance. Wife has excellent credit, never missed a payment, ever, and the payment missed was for $11. Once we got the delinquent notice(by phone message), it was paid immediately.
Now I see that her credit score dropped almost 30 points because of one missed payment showing 60 days late.
Do we have the right to ask Sears to remove this information due to the fact that a statement was never sent? Isn't there a requirement in the Fair Credit Act about
having to provide monthly statements.
Tx in advance for any help.
@Jstic wrote:Wife has a Sears CC and used it to charge $11 a few months ago. It seems that Sears stopped sending statements by mail sometime last year, although we never requested
any change in the way statements were to be sent. I pay the bills, and because I never saw the statement, I didn't pay anything as I assumed we had no balance. Wife has excellent credit, never missed a payment, ever, and the payment missed was for $11. Once we got the delinquent notice(by phone message), it was paid immediately.
Now I see that her credit score dropped almost 30 points because of one missed payment showing 60 days late.
Do we have the right to ask Sears to remove this information due to the fact that a statement was never sent? Isn't there a requirement in the Fair Credit Act about
having to provide monthly statements.
Tx in advance for any help.
If your report showing 60 days late, that means two payments were missed. Did you you all sign up to receive electronic billing? If Sears record shows a statement was generated and it have your correct address, I doubt if they remove 2 late payments.
You have nothing to lose by asking them. Years ago we had a late payment due to an annual fee being charged on a Capital One. I hadn't charged anything that month, so I didn't even open the statement. How I caught it was that I had a credit monitoring system and it alerted me of a FICO decline of about 40 points. I called Capital One immediately and because I had never been late on a payment they took off the information on the late payment.
Two bits of advice:
1) Be nice....more success with honey than with vinegar as the saying goes. Don't blame them. Tell them how it happened and apologize, apologize...and then apologize again. Anger and blaming will get you nowhere. Take responsibility for missing the payment. (Did anyone get electronic statements?)
2) For heavens sake, make it a habit to check your credit card balances online. I check mine almost every morning (but we have a lot of moving parts at our house). I look for fraud, but I have discovered things such as annual subscriptions to services that we had cancelled, such as McAfee, etc..Believe me, a call or dispute immediately after a charge shows up is much more effective than a call a couple of months down the line. If you had been checking, you would have paid the $11 as soon as it showed up. Even if you were tardy on checking, you would at least have discovered this when it was 30 days late instead of 60.
Good luck!
+1
Great advice! (The reason LynetteM is one of my heros on myFICO!)
"Wife has a Sears CC and used it to charge $11 a few months ago. It seems that Sears stopped sending statements by mail sometime last year, although we never requested
any change in the way statements were to be sent. I pay the bills, and because I never saw the statement, I didn't pay anything as I assumed we had no balance. Wife has excellent credit, never missed a payment, ever, and the payment missed was for $11. Once we got the delinquent notice(by phone message), it was paid immediately.
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This sort of thing is exactly why I am paranoid.
I paid an electric bill back in the early 90s by mail and supposedly it got lost. I had paid with some crappy money order that never did get resolved.
So I decided to pay in cash this time in the night deposit box at the ELECTRIC company itself....where night pmts are supposed to be made.
They claim they never got it yet again. Someone likely kept my $70 cash. Stupid on my part but I had no checking back then. And I actually trusted people early in life.
I was so ticked off that I asked them how to pay it without having to go downtown mid day and they said there were payment places around town. So I got the closest one and went and paid it a third time. This time I got a receipt that actually meant something.
All that way back when made me VERY paranoid so I watch my credit cards like a hawk.
For instance the wifes Amazon card she got before I got mine still is showing no pmt due even tho mine has had a pmt due for 2 weeks. Could be a billing issue of some sort, but Im not taking chances. I made a $111.00 payment and Im holding onto the rest of the payment I was going to make until she gets a statement.
That way they cant pull some crap of me not having made a payment this month.
I would talk to Sears about it all, but unless someone is feeling very generous its doubtful they will do much.
Just keep on top of your pmts and her credit score should recover soon enough.
@Jstic wrote:Wife has a Sears CC and used it to charge $11 a few months ago. It seems that Sears stopped sending statements by mail sometime last year, although we never requested
any change in the way statements were to be sent. I pay the bills, and because I never saw the statement, I didn't pay anything as I assumed we had no balance. Wife has excellent credit, never missed a payment, ever, and the payment missed was for $11. Once we got the delinquent notice(by phone message), it was paid immediately.
Now I see that her credit score dropped almost 30 points because of one missed payment showing 60 days late.
Do we have the right to ask Sears to remove this information due to the fact that a statement was never sent? Isn't there a requirement in the Fair Credit Act about
having to provide monthly statements.
Tx in advance for any help.
I don't mean to sound like I'm bashing you but it's never a good idea to assume anything. For example, an annual fee may post or a subscription to a magazine that you completely forgot about posted.
In this day and age, it is very quick and simple to stay abreast of all our accounts in real time.
Somewhere, in most, if not all credit card agreements, buried in the fine print, you will find a statement saying we are responsible for making timely payments, even if we don't receive a statement.
I hope you get this issue resolved to your satisfaction.
Ditto to everyone else.
Ignore your paper statements where payments are concerned (but keep a record for taxes, study them for incorrect charges, etc.). Pay online!!!! Checks get lost in the mail too.
If you can make multiple payments online in the same month, I would set the account up to pay at least the minimum by the due date and you can pay extra if you want to PIF or just pay some more.
Thanx for all the comments. Don't misunderstand my position, I am not blaming this on Sears, I(we) are responsible for paying the bills and knowing what and when things were charged. I did make a mistake on the 60 day thing, we were about to go 60 days late when I got the automated phone call, so it never really made 60. So it is only one negative on the report.
If nothing else comes of this I will have learned a valuable lesson in NEVER assume anything when it comes to CC companies/banks. Best to just check all cards on a monthly basis for any activity.
We never signed up for electronic statements on this account and that is why I am concerned about the lack of paper statements. I am going to call them this week and see if I can get them to understand my side. If one thinks about it, we would be crazy to take such a hit on purpose, I mean $11 is just a few pints of Ben & Jerry's :0).
It used to be that the CCCs would call you when a payment was not received. With downsizing and the Internet, they probably don't call as much as the use to. Many CCCs dont issue a statement if you don't have a balance which is why it is so important to check online or even just call and use the automatic account info feature. My only remaing derog, from BofA, was because it didn't look at my statement carefully and since BofA is BofA, it will remian for the full 7 years. Learn from my mistake.