Inadvertant Late Payment Impact on Credit Score

[Anonymous]

New to the forum so please bear with me is this has been addressed previously.  My credit scores have been in the excellent range (750-810) for many years.  However, due to a misunderstanding with a merchant, I inadvertantly was late on a $20 minimum payment on my VISA.  This VISA card usually carries a 0 balance, but in early spring this year, a couple transactions totalling $48 were charged on the card. The merchandise purchased was returned to the merchant due to a duplicate purchase by my wife and I was told a credit would be issued.  Well, it seems that instead of issuing the credit, the merchant sent me a VISA gift card for $48.  Through my own negligence, I did not monitor the balance on my VISA and as a result did not notice the card still had an outstanding $48 balance until after the due date.  My credit card issuer used snail mail to notify me of the late/missing payment, and by the time I received the notification and immediately paid the balance, the card issuer had already filed a late/missing payment report to the three primary credit agencies.  This is the first blemist ever on my credit history.   Yesterday, I reviewed my credit scores and was absolutly floored by the amount my credit scores had decreased.  Credit scores of 803, 790, and 773 on Feb 3, 2017 had decreased to 709, 742, and 705 respectively.  The only negative thing shown on my reports was this late/missing payment.  My total credit card and revolving debt had decreased and no new credit accounts had been opened.  Given that this was the very first payment blemish in my credit history (over 50 years of credit activity), I am looking for suggestions as to how I can minimize this singular oversight on my part and get my credit scores increased to their former level.  Feed back please.  Thanks.

[Anonymous]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

New to the forum so please bear with me is this has been addressed previously.  My credit scores have been in the excellent range (750-810) for many years.  However, due to a misunderstanding with a merchant, I inadvertantly was late on a $20 minimum payment on my VISA.  This VISA card usually carries a 0 balance, but in early spring this year, a couple transactions totalling $48 were charged on the card. The merchandise purchased was returned to the merchant due to a duplicate purchase by my wife and I was told a credit would be issued.  Well, it seems that instead of issuing the credit, the merchant sent me a VISA gift card for $48.  Through my own negligence, I did not monitor the balance on my VISA and as a result did not notice the card still had an outstanding $48 balance until after the due date.  My credit card issuer used snail mail to notify me of the late/missing payment, and by the time I received the notification and immediately paid the balance, the card issuer had already filed a late/missing payment report to the three primary credit agencies.  This is the first blemist ever on my credit history.   Yesterday, I reviewed my credit scores and was absolutly floored by the amount my credit scores had decreased.  Credit scores of 803, 790, and 773 on Feb 3, 2017 had decreased to 709, 742, and 705 respectively.  The only negative thing shown on my reports was this late/missing payment.  My total credit card and revolving debt had decreased and no new credit accounts had been opened.  Given that this was the very first payment blemish in my credit history (over 50 years of credit activity), I am looking for suggestions as to how I can minimize this singular oversight on my part and get my credit scores increased to their former level.  Feed back please.  Thanks.

---

The best and only option you have is to beg the creditor for a goodwill adjustment. Don't call and speak to a regular customer service representative. Email or snail mail the CEO and tell them what happened and plead and beg them for a removal. 

[Anonymous]

Great advice from Donny.

I suggest you look into the Saturation Technique for Goodwill letters.  It's important not to assume that the first time they say No that it is the final word on the subject.

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Rebuilding-Your-Credit/The-Saturation-Technique-Best-GW-adjustment-o...

I also suggest that you huddle with some people in the Rebuilding forum and get some advice on crafting the language for the GW letter.  Prior relationship and history with the CC issuer is worth mentioning.

One thing you will want to be sure to do is to make the letter brief, simple, persuasive, and easy on the eyes.  You want it to look different from the way you wrote your initial post in this thread, for example, which is a big wall of text with no paragraph breaks.

One final thought:

Allow this to be a teachable moment for the importance of setting up auto-pay on every single CC that you have.  The autopay can be to only make the minimum payment, if you like, but make sure that much at least is in place.

Good luck!

[RobertEG]

Late payments are not reportable to a CRA until they have been late for at least 30-days after the billing due date.

If you made the requried payment after the billing due date, you were late under your account agreement, but the late does not become reportable to a CRA until it becomes 30 days past the billing due date.

What was the billing due date, and when did you make the payment?

[Anonymous]

Excellent advice, I missed a payment and ended up with a 30D first time in my life because I was in hosp and forgot to put it on bill pay thru my bank...I can emphasize..it's devastating.

I got the "backdoor" phone number from here and spoke to a very nice gal in the corporate office and they removed it right away, I explained what happened and took responsibility for the mishap and she was able to pull up my account (along with my other cards with this company) and could see my excellent payment history. She even sent me a letter confirming the removal for my records.

Don't give up, a majority of businesses will work with you removing a one time blemish because they know that it isn't your norm.

Best of luck!

[Anonymous]

Very helpful comments from RobertEG and NeverTooOld.

I had thought at the time about raising what RobertEG asked and forgot to do it.  Very grateful he did so.  Based on the initial post it sounds like the following is the sequence of events (timeline guessed by me):

Day 1: Payment is due.

Day 7: The CC issuer sends a snail mail notice that you missed a payment.  It might have been before Day 7.

Day 14:  You receive the letter

Day 17: You pay it down (you described your action as immediate).

REG's point is that they should not have submitted this as a Day 30 late until Day 30, and then only if you had made no payment.  Since in the reconstructed timeline above you pay on Day 17, it sounds like either (a) they submitted this prematurely, or (b) it took a strangely long time for you to get their letter.  (Perhaps they sent it to a previous address and it was forwarded?  You were on vacation?  Etc.)

That's why we'd need to know when you made the payment relative to the actual due date.

[Anonymous]

Thanks to all who responded.  The suggestions are great and I am working this afternoon on my goodwill adjustment letter for the saturation approach.  And as suggested, this credit card account is now set up for automatic payment.  I will post updates as appropriate.  Thanks again.

[Anonymous]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

Thanks to all who responded.  The suggestions are great and I am working this afternoon on my goodwill adjustment letter for the saturation approach.  And as suggested, this credit card account is now set up for automatic payment.  I will post updates as appropriate.  Thanks again.

---

Please see the requests above made by Robert and CGID requesting the specific dates of when your payement was due and when you did actually pay it.  If it was inside the 30 day time frame, there's a chance that the reporting of a 30 day late is inaccurate and going the GW letter route isn't the correct move.  You want to make sure you address this issue the proper way, so checking those dates is definitely the first step here.

[Marcos8]

Is there some type of law or something in the T&C of the card that states how a refund is supposed to be issued? I know right now a late is a late and needs to be dealt with but I think it's a little shifty that the account wasn't just credited. What if you didn't want a gift card?... or anything for that matter? What if you just wanted a zero balance so you could close the card? I'm no guru when it comes to laws and such like others here but I think there's enough in this situation to press the issue. Just my opinion good luck

[fltireguy]

Can you still dispute the original transaction,  due to the fact that a credit was never iddues to the account...?