A 103 Point Drop

[MrBenchMark]

Hello all. I had something unexpededly happen that floored me recently. A few weeks ago I got notified by MyFico that my credit score had changed. You see, for the longest time, I've only used one credit card and paid the balance every month, and depending on what my statement balance was, my credit score would decrease or increase a few points, so I went to go see what had happened. I've had exceptional credit seeing my credit score as high as 820 at one point but once I had paid my auto loan off, it dropped 41 points. I was temporaily irritated but shrugged it off. When I looked, I saw my score had decreased 103 points! Upon further investigation I noticed it was an old Bank of America credit card account that was the culprit; the Bank of America credit card is my oldest credit account dating back to 2003 and one I hadn't used for a long time. Upon further investigation I found they had charged an unexpected annual fee of $60 that went unnoticed by me. A long time ago I elected to recieve emailed statements in lieu of mailed statements and for the longest time, every time I received one I would always think to myself, "Why am I getting one of these? I haven't used it." I'd more often than not open it up to find out what I laready knew, and that was how I had a $0 balance. So, after receiving these every month after awhile, I stopped looking at them because I knew I hadn't used the card, and just deleted them. Well, they always had a $0 blance until that one time. I searched for it in the trash and sure enough, there it was, a balance of $69 that went unnoticed. 

So, with this all being written, do I have any recourse or do I just bite the bullet and carry on? I mean it's a shame this happened and it's not like I didn't have the money to pay it. This has really irritated me because I worked so hard to create a great credit score for this to happen. 

[Anonymous]

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@MrBenchMark wrote:

Hello all. I had something unexpededly happen that floored me recently. A few weeks ago I got notified by MyFico that my credit score had changed. You see, for the longest time, I've only used one credit card and paid the balance every month, and depending on what my statement balance was, my credit score would decrease or increase a few points, so I went to go see what had happened. I've had exceptional credit seeing my credit score as high as 820 at one point but once I had paid my auto loan off, it dropped 41 points. I was temporaily irritated but shrugged it off. When I looked, I saw my score had decreased 103 points! Upon further investigation I noticed it was an old Bank of America credit card account that was the culprit; the Bank of America credit card is my oldest credit account dating back to 2003 and one I hadn't used for a long time. Upon further investigation I found they had charged an unexpected annual fee of $60 that went unnoticed by me. A long time ago I elected to recieve emailed statements in lieu of mailed statements and for the longest time, every time I received one I would always think to myself, "Why am I getting one of these? I haven't used it." I'd more often than not open it up to find out what I laready knew, and that was how I had a $0 balance. So, after receiving these every month after awhile, I stopped looking at them because I knew I hadn't used the card, and just deleted them. Well, they always had a $0 blance until that one time. I searched for it in the trash and sure enough, there it was, a balance of $69 that went unnoticed. 

So, with this all being written, do I have any recourse or do I just bite the bullet and carry on? I mean it's a shame this happened and it's not like I didn't have the money to pay it. This has really irritated me because I worked so hard to create a great credit score for this to happen. 

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Your best bet is to contact BoA and explain the situation and ask them for a one time courtesy removal of the late payment.  You may have to make multiple requests and go high as you can up the food chain in BoA

[Appleman]

To help others reading this post, activate AutoPay on the card accounts. Even if for the minimum payment.

You can also sign up for text alerts to let you know if a payment is due soon.

Sorry about this OP, tough break, but hopefully a phone call will straighten this out.

[elim]

If you set up auto-pay, Don't forget to set up Alerts, I would hate to have 10k worth of Fraud on an SD'd card and have a huge minimum payment leave my bank account.  I just use a back up bill notifier, like PrismMoney. It will be quiet until BOA sends a statement that is not $0.  It will remind me once when the statement cuts, and again the day before it's due, counting down the days the entire time.

Is the AF due every year on the BOA card? or is it some new charge that hasn't been due in years?  Call BOA and let them know you lost 103 points and see what you can do to have them remove the late.

https://www.prismmoney.com/