topic Re: Please help! Experian and Early Exclusions, trying to get a Mortgage in Rebuilding Your Credit

Please help! Experian and Early Exclusions, trying to get a Mortgage

Anonymous — Mon, 06 Jul 2020 16:28:40 GMT

Hi everyone,

New to the forums. Looking for some help with Experian reporting and getting customer service to do an early exclusion on a number of tradelines (student loans) that were late in 2013/2014 and are slatted to fall off automatically in December 2020. Normally I would just wait until Dec, but I am in the middle of buying a house and these late payments are severely impacted my score and ability to obtain a mortgage.

I've tried everything and spoken to CSRs both abroad and in the U.S. as well as a supervisor or 2, still no luck. They keep telling me it is not possible to do an early exclusion and that the only way to solve it is to open a Dispute or contact Fed Loan servicing directly as only they can remove late payments or bump up the reporting timeline.

Please any help or ideas/suggestions are greatly appreciated. These late payments are pulling my score down a solid 50-100 points and very likly I won't be approved for a mortgage because of it.

Thanks!

Re: Please help! Experian and Early Exclusions, trying to get a Mortgage

gdale6 — Mon, 06 Jul 2020 16:57:09 GMT

Unfortunately you are not going to get anywhere with EX this far out, they are now typically only granting them 1 month prior to the scheduled drop off date. I would contact whomever is reporting them and ask for a goodwill removal of the lates.

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Rebuilding-Your-Credit/GW-letter-Q-amp-A-Examples-and-GW-Success-Stories/td-p/1573680

Adding: If these are lates in an otherwise current account early exclusion does not work for them only for COs, CAs and other total derog accounts.

Re: Please help! Experian and Early Exclusions, trying to get a Mortgage

Anonymous — Mon, 06 Jul 2020 17:45:28 GMT

Thanks, Gdale.

Previous posts I read on this topic were saying that Experian would do 3 month EE, guess that policy has now been updated to only 1 month? I've tried multiple GW attempts with the creditor (Fed Loans). Had 2 Customer Advocates submit as well as 2 Supervisors and still no luck. The problem with this particular creditor is that they have walled off there "credit dept" which handles all these types of requests. Unfortunately no one, externally or internally is able to speak with someone directly. The response back is generally that they must report 7 full years and it is illegal to remove any late payment months and that I should contact the CRAs who can change the 7 year date. The run around from both sides is infuriating.

I was able to successfully have Transunion do an EE and remove the late payments completely. Technically all 6 accounts feel off when that happened. Blew me away. My score improved 65+ points afterward!

Based on your additional comment at the end, are you saying I have a better chance with late payments being removed if the account was in collection or charged off? So the worse the account is the higher chance of a resolution, wow.

So am I just totally out of luck here? I've completly given up with Equifax, and since I was successful with TU, figured EX was worth a shot. I only need 2 out of the 3 to remove and I'm golden as mortgage companies take the "middle" score.

Any other unique ways to get late payments removed or lessen the impact they have on my scores?

Re: Please help! Experian and Early Exclusions, trying to get a Mortgage

Anonymous — Mon, 06 Jul 2020 23:47:21 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Thanks, Gdale.

Previous posts I read on this topic were saying that Experian would do 3 month EE, guess that policy has now been updated to only 1 month? I've tried multiple GW attempts with the creditor (Fed Loans). Had 2 Customer Advocates submit as well as 2 Supervisors and still no luck. The problem with this particular creditor is that they have walled off there "credit dept" which handles all these types of requests. Unfortunately no one, externally or internally is able to speak with someone directly. The response back is generally that they must report 7 full years and it is illegal to remove any late payment months and that I should contact the CRAs who can change the 7 year date. The run around from both sides is infuriating.

I was able to successfully have Transunion do an EE and remove the late payments completely. Technically all 6 accounts feel off when that happened. Blew me away. My score improved 65+ points afterward!

Based on your additional comment at the end, are you saying I have a better chance with late payments being removed if the account was in collection or charged off? So the worse the account is the higher chance of a resolution, wow.

So am I just totally out of luck here? I've completly given up with Equifax, and since I was successful with TU, figured EX was worth a shot. I only need 2 out of the 3 to remove and I'm golden as mortgage companies take the "middle" score.

Any other unique ways to get late payments removed or lessen the impact they have on my scores?

EX does do 3 months EE, but they like to make it confusing. They now have "baked in" 2 months of EE into their "on record until" date, meaning you can only request EE 1 month prior to that "on record until" date.

+1 to what @gdale6 said. You can only do EE for derogatory accounts that are about to fall off at the 7 year mark. This does not include lates that are before the final string of lates that lead to the demise of the TL pr to positive accounts with past lates. All of those will fall off naturally as they hit 7 years old.

Only exception is EX, and it is not much in terms of an exception to the 7 years rule to reporting lates. They simply drop entire strings of lates (lates that are back to back, with no positive reporting between them) when the first late in the string reaches 7 years old. Isolated/individual lates or seperated strings of lates will each fall off when the isolated/individual late reaches 7 years old or the separate string's first late reaches 7 years old. I hope i did not make that sound confusing. I have a knack for doing that, it seems!

TU and EQ *only* drop lates individually, one at a time, regardless if they are in a string or not, as each individual late reaches 7 years old.

So, unfortunately, you are correct. Unless your accounts were a repo, CA, CO, BK, or something where the *entire* TL will drop off at the 7 year mark, it cannot be EE. Lates cannot be EE in a positive account and not even lates that were listed in a derogatory account prior to the final string of lates.

Here are some examples from my SLs:

This one is particularly frustrating. There are strings of lates and individual lates. None of the lates can be EE'd. Only the whole account can be EE from TU 6 months prior to the listed "estimated date of removal". That specific date is 9/2023. If you look at the payment history, that is 7 years from the DoFD (the date the account first became late), and don't be tricked by the first late of the last string being in 11/2016. That is not the DoFD, because that is a 90d late. If you count back, 9/2016 is the actual DoFD, making 9/2023 accurate for the natural drop date for the entire TL. 6 months prior to that, on 3/1/2023, I can have the entire TL removed.

So again, you are correct, by making payments, I was in turn "punished" by having the drop date pushed further out, as the account was evetually sent to a CA.

Now, did I ever make a payment? No, but that is a long story for a different day and way off topic. It is incredibly hard to prove you did not make payments lol

Does your account(s) show an "estimated date of removal" for TU, "on record until" for EX, or "Date of first delinquency" for EQ? If not, there is no possibilty of EE from any bureau that does not have those dates listed, as it did not end as a derogatory account.

Positive accounts are a good thing and stay on your credit reports for 10+ years. While frustrating right now because you have lates on there, once they finally drop off, you will have account(s) that help you way more than if they had just simply been completely removed, as then that would lower your AAoA and possibly even your AoOA, and in turn dropping your scores. While the reverse is true for baddies. It is good for derogatory account(s) to fall off because their age will never help your scores as long as they are listed as a derogatory. Any benefit from the age will be crushed by the status of the account(s).

I also have accounts that were once the thorns in my side that were positive, but with lates. Now that the lates have dropped off, those accounts are only helping me more than if they had simply been removed.

Just this month I had one of those accounts drop off. It had reached exactly 10 years old from date of closing/last update. It had lates many, many years ago that had since long dropped off, but it was my oldest account and it dropped both my AAoA and AoOA. What a doozey! Several of my scorecards dropped upwards of 20 points from that! My next 4 oldest accounts will be dropping off in October and I am already bracing myself for the blow. Once those accounts are gone, they are gone for good.

Sorry for the long winded post, I just wanted to share, thoroughly, my experience with the situation of lates, derogatory accounts, and positive accounts that at one point had lates, to show you that while it hurts now, it will get much better soon!

Good luck!

Re: Please help! Experian and Early Exclusions, trying to get a Mortgage

Anonymous — Tue, 07 Jul 2020 00:14:36 GMT

To add to what @Anonymous said, keep in mind that the 1 month (non baked-in) time that can be requested, is at the end of that calendar month. For example, I called EX for 2 accounts "on record until Aug 2020" on July 1st, and was told to call back on the 31st, as that would make 1 month from Aug 31st.

I knew what the answer would be, but I gave it a shot anyway *sigh*.

Re: Please help! Experian and Early Exclusions, trying to get a Mortgage

Anonymous — Tue, 07 Jul 2020 00:24:56 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
To add to what @Anonymous said, keep in mind that the 1 month (non baked-in) time that can be requested, is at the end of that calendar month. For example, I called EX for 2 accounts "on record until Aug 2020" on July 1st, and was told to call back on the 31st, as that would make 1 month from Aug 31st.

I knew what the answer would be, but I gave it a shot anyway *sigh*.

That is interesting because I have called on the first of the month in the past. I have a few coming up in a couple months, so we will see what I get told this next time! Because honestly, the day before the 2 months baked in, is essentially just the 2 months and not 3, imo.

Re: Please help! Experian and Early Exclusions, trying to get a Mortgage

Anonymous — Tue, 07 Jul 2020 03:29:45 GMT

@Anonymous yeah I'm sure if I called back I'd get a different answer, I just don't have any other CR updates til later in the month so I haven't bothered yet.

Re: Please help! Experian and Early Exclusions, trying to get a Mortgage

Anonymous — Wed, 08 Jul 2020 17:36:26 GMT

Thanks LaHoss for the detailed post. The more information the better, so it really is appreciated.

I spoke with a Dispute Manager at EQ a few days ago and he was very clear that "all the lates" will fall off at 7 years from the DOFD mark, which for me is December 27th 2020. He also said that the earliest they can do an EE is 3 months prior, or Sept 27th. What really astounded me was his comment around asking for EE and requesting it in the system prior to 3 months. He said that he could put the request in for me for EE now but that the system will automatically reject it AND worst part, "update?" the account which inevitably will make the late payment hurt just a bit more? That part really confused me. Seems like I have done more harm than good trying to get Experian and Equifax to do EEs. Transunion was the most painless. After speaking with a "manager" they simply removed all 6 Fed Loan accounts which had late payments from 2013/2014. Kind of shocked me how easy it was. My FICO 8 score jumped +63 points.

To recap here is my understanding of EE for late payments on closed and paid accounts

TU - 6 months (they removed the entire account from the record, not just late payments)

EX - 3 months (will need to call the Dispute department directly and ideally request a manager)

EQ - 1 month (maybe). I called for weeks and kept getting CSRs and Managers in a different country who could care less about helping

One thing I am now approaching is the AZEO method as a last-ditch effort to boost scores 5-10 pts before closing on a mortgage. We shall see what happens.