Just wanted to briefly share my experience with having a 30-day late hit my credit report and the process I went through to get it taken off. We set up a HELOC with Third-Federal in September and promptly set up an online account and autopay.
Timeline:
September 8: HELOC opened
October 1: Statement closed
October 7: Accessed account online to set up autopay
October 25: Payment due
November 24: Received letter dated November 18 that our payment would be 30 days late in 7 days. The irony is that the day we received the letter was already 30 days after they claim the statement is due. This was also Thanksgiving week, and given the fact that we were already 30 days late, we did not respond until after the holiday.
November 30: Received letter dated November 24 stating that the 30-day late would be reported to the credit bureaus. We called in and made the payment that same day.
The 30-day late hit my credit report in January and my FICO 8 dropped 40 points to low 700's instantly. We called them 3 or 4 times explaining that we had autopay set up, etc. No dice. Finally, we sent an email to them, documenting the above information along with evidence of when we received the letters (thank God for Informed Delivery). Shockingly, they actually agreed to remove the 30-day lates. I'm fully aware of how fortunate we are for them to do so, but just wanted to share this with everyone in case anyone goes through something similar.
Edit: formatting/spelling
[2/2019]
Congratulations on your success! Thank you for sharing the data points.
@AllZero wrote:
Congratulations on your success! Thank you for sharing the data points.
Thank you! Definitely breathed a huge sigh of relief when they notified us of the removal.
@coldfusion wrote:What was the issue with autopay? If I understand the timeline correctly the 30 day late would have been tied to the October 1st payment, which leads me to believe that their autopay only applies to statements cut after autopay is enabled and not an existing or previous statement.
I'm not entirely certain. Their customer service told us that the IT department didn't have any data from when we logged on in early October, so I'm not even sure if it tracked at all.
@Anonymous wrote:From what I've seen when setting up autopay on an account, sometimes it doesn't kick in until the following cycle. Usually when you set it up it will let you know the first date that it will withdraw... so if you set it up in early October, did it state that the first payment would be taken in that same month?
I can't say I remember 100%, but I'm aware that that could be an issue, so it'd only make sense that I checked to make sure.
As an update, I did receive the letter confirming they will remove the delinquency. However, they are not taking any responsibility for the autopay issue. They simply stated that they would remove it because they failed to notify us earlier.