Hi everybody,
Over the past 2 years I've built my FICO score up from the low 600's to a respectable 726. I created a budget, stopped using credit cards and automated all my bill payments to make sure everything got paid on time. Today, I received a credit alert from myFico telling me that my scored had just dropped 102 points!!!
I immediately read the alert details and found that Sallie Mae had posted a new entry to my credit report regarding my old student loan. The new entry said that I had negotiated with the creditor to make partial payments. As i said earlier, i've automated all my bill payments and hadn't made any changes to my payment plan for well over a year. So, I called up Sallie Mae to find out what was going on.
It turns out, the report entry is referring to the payment arrangements i set up over a year ago (and which are supposed to last for 24 months, I have 9 more to go). For some reason, when Sallie Mae submitted it's report to Equifax in April, they restated that I was making interest only payments and it is now showing up as a new status in my credit report.
I talked to SM customer service and they said that I could change my payment arrangements to make interest + principal payments and they would submit a letter to the credit agencies in the next reporting cycle. I have no problem doing this but I'm concerned that it won't completely undo the damage that's already been done.
Should I write the credit reporting agencies and try to clear up the issue? Or should the letter from Sallie Mae fix things once I change my payment plan?
Thanks in advance for any advice. This is my first time posting on this forum though I've been reading it for quite a while and it's been a treasure trove of useful information.
Message Edited by dima1771 on
05-12-2008 02:55 PM
