topic Re: Goodwill letter Success with American Express in Rebuilding Your Credit

Goodwill letter Success with American Express

Anonymous — Wed, 27 Jan 2021 08:01:12 GMT

Late last year I decided to get my first credit card in 9 years. I had dreaded looking at my credit report for years, and since I was considering the Apple Card I wanted to see were I stood. All my fico8 scores were in the 670s, so I decided to start working at rebuilding. I noticed two 30 day late payments with American Express from 5/19 and 8/19. In December I started sending out goodwills using the saturation method. I did some quick googling and found roughly 7 different AMEX addresses and started mailing out letters to each of them basically every week. I figured the more eyes that saw my letter the better chance I'd have. After a couple weeks I started receiving denials left and right , and ended up receiving 19 of in total. Yesterday morning I received an alert from myfico app that transunion had been updated with past dues removed. Then today in the mail I received a letter in the mail from AMEX stating they removed the late payments and adjustments would be made to all 3 CB's. My transunion score went up +7 points. Not a ton, but sure feels good to have those removed! I assume since they were getting close to the 2 year mark that they weren't causing much damage. During all of this I also lowered my utalization to 1% and as of today all my Fico8 scores are in the 740s! Looking forward to seeing what adjustments I get on my Experian and Equafax scores.

Now i'm focusing on goodwills to Nordstrom. I have one 30 day late from 1/20. During the same time period I sent roughly 22 goodwills to them. I only received 2 replies and the most recent denial stated they would not respond back to any more requests about this topic. Their bank partner is TD and they sure seem tough. I figure I'll keep sending them and maybe concentrate sending to their CO's and hopefully I'll get lucky!

Also, I wanted to thank this amazing community. I read through so much amazing advice on here about goodwills and rebuilding credit. So much good info on here especially if you dig deep! The next plan is to start trying for some CLI's in about 6 months after all my scores settle.

Re: Goodwill Success with AMX!

thornback — Wed, 27 Jan 2021 02:02:27 GMT

Excellent work! Amex is an extremely hard nut to crack so you should be super proud of yourself. Congratulations!!

Re: Goodwill Success with American Express

Anonymous — Wed, 27 Jan 2021 02:14:42 GMT

Awesome. It sounds as though you're off on a good start. Good luck and congrats!

Re: Goodwill Success with American Express

AllZero — Wed, 27 Jan 2021 03:33:17 GMT

Congratulations on your GW success! Thank you for sharing your story.

Re: Goodwill Success with American Express

Anonymous — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 07:39:28 GMT

Thank you so much!

Re: Goodwill Success with American Express

Anonymous — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 07:39:50 GMT

Much thanks!

Re: Goodwill Success with AMX!

Anonymous — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 07:40:11 GMT

Thank you! I really appreciate that!

Re: Goodwill letter Success with American Express

mbauza86 — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 03:36:51 GMT

I EDITED MY REPLY WITH MORE DETAILS SINCE PEOPLE HAVE INQUIRED VIA DM ON HOW I GOT AMEX TO DELETE MY LATE PAYMENTS. Overall, when I called Amex, my account was already annotated, but I have a few ideas on what got AMEX to agree to delete.

Omg this gave me so much hope to keep trying to have Amex delete my lates!

I had to call AMEX today - not to delete my payments (had 30/60/30 from early 2019) - but because I wanted them to correct the months of when the late payments happened. EQ showed different later months than TU and EX. I was hoping that if they adjusted my EQ, maybe I'd gain a few points LOL. I had given up hope since in the past, I tried to GW them at all costs and they would always refuse to delete them. I've even contacted the CEO and nothing - ZILCH.

So when I spoke with Amex today (their credit department that handles discrepancies), the representative was initially standoffish and told me that Amex doesn't delete late accurate payments or adjusts accurate info. But when she reviewed my account, she said there were notes that Amex had agreed to delete my late payments and she would process it now and the bureas should receive it soon. I thought maybe it was an error on the operator's part.

Overall, I don't know what prompted Amex to delete my late payments. I sent them multiple letters in the past. I also kept disputing it via the bureas. And like I mentioned, even contacted their CEO. Now, I had just recently hired Lexington but canceled soon shortly after. I felt like it was a waste of money when I could keep trying to do it myself for free...lol but then coincidentally this happened.

Also, I did file a complaint with CFPB because the collection company AMEX used to collect the late payments wouldn't send me all the receipts - and I wanted to prove that I paid the CA at different dates and earlier than what AMEX was reporting and I should not have a 90 day late etc. The CA collected all the money and once the payment arrangements were done, that's when they sent the money to AMEX, but technically, I did pay earlier. After filing the complaint, the CA said they had no records and to contact AMEX. The complaint was also sent to Amex, so I'm wondering if this is what motivated AMEX to agree to delete the payments? I'll never know why Amex decided to delete. I won't even dare to call them again to inquire about it. LOL

OMG yipeee!!!

Re: Goodwill letter Success with American Express

mbauza86 — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:50:18 GMT

OMG - I know it's almsot 4am, but your post gave me so much hope...... that I went into EX and pulled a new report.

I didn't think anything would be updated at this hour and guess what.....the lates are GONE!!!!!!!!!!!!! OMG!!!! Yay!! In less than 24 hours!!! I literally called today around 3pm.

My fico 8 jumped 15 points and my mortgage score jumped by 22 points.

Re: Goodwill letter Success with American Express

Anonymous — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:50:58 GMT

That's great to hear! Make sure to be patient. Transunion updated my credit report before I even got a letter from AMEX letting me know about my deletions, but nothing yet on the other two. My letter said it could take one month to be updated.

Fingers crossed it happens soon and you get a nice bump in your credit score. Mine didn't go up a ton, but it's sure nice to see a credit report that's more clean

Re: Goodwill letter Success with American Express

Anonymous — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 08:54:04 GMT

I think we replied at the exact same time! Haha. That's awesome and huge congrats on the nice jump! Mine were only 30 day lates, so I'm sure having that 60 day deleted helped a lot!

Re: Goodwill letter Success with American Express

Credit4Growth — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 09:01:32 GMT

@mbauza86 wrote:
OMG - I know it's almsot 4am, but your post gave me so much hope...... that I went into EX and pulled a new report.

I didn't think anything would be updated at this hour and guess what.....the lates are GONE!!!!!!!!!!!!! OMG!!!! Yay!! In less than 24 hours!!! I literally called today around 3pm. Nice!

My fico 8 jumped 15 points and my mortgage score jumped by 22 points. ... and wow!

Congratulations

Re: Goodwill letter Success with American Express

OmarGB9 — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 20:51:31 GMT

Congrats!

Re: Goodwill letter Success with American Express

Anonymous — Wed, 31 Mar 2021 17:01:33 GMT

What address did you mail your letter too? I mailed a letter to this address: P.O. Box 981535 El Paso, TX 79998-1535, but haven't heard back yet.