Up until a couple months ago, I've never had a late payment and we (wife and I) have good credit. Unfortunately, a few months ago our escrow changed on our mortgage due to increasing property taxes. We sent out normal payment in, but it was $57.59 short (our payment went from $1398.73 to $1456.32). Our mortgage company sent us a letter, but we didn't open it until it was after 30 days late. (Maybe around 40-ish days late?) Completely our fault and our credit took a huge hit, a little over 70 points. We called our lender, Colonial, and they said they do not remove their reports sent to the credit bureaus, even if it was an honest mistake and they still received (and applied) a payment that was less than 4% shy of the total amount. Normally I wouldn't be too concerned because I know one late 30-day payment will not affect our score too much after a couple of years, but we're trying to buy a house soon and I'm concerned it will leave us with a higher interest rate.
We tried to file a dispute with Experian, but they confirmed it was correct (we were hoping the lender wouldn't respond). Is there any other courses of action we could take? It's unfortunate because this was solely due to a change in escrow, so it's not like there wasn't enough to cover the house note itself, it was just $57 short because our taxes went up that month.
Thanks for any help and suggestions you have.
