I had five late payments on a student loan in late 2010 showing up to 180 days late. Apparently they had been put into forebearance which shouldn't count as late and the 3rd or 4th time I called a rep told me without hesitation that they'd update the CRAs to report a positive payment history. Anyway, it happened today and my EQ score went from 673 to 732 and my TU score increased 42 points. That makes those two files completely clean but still I'm shocked how much my score changed given that those late payments were over six years old.
I've come across the concept of re-bucketing a few times and I guess this might be a good illustration of that given that my EX score only saw a marginal gain of 6 points, since it's still dirty with a settled AT&T collection from around that same time period.
I thought that might be interesting and also I want to say thanks to everyone who contributes to this resource.
Last July I had to have my stepfather co-sign for a car loan when the dealer pulled a ~530 score for me. The report was an old student loan and a bunch of collections. That's it. It was embarassing and I had just gotten sober and it was time to grow up a bit so I opened a couple of $200 secured cards and started reading what to do next. If you'd asked me then, I would've said scores in the 700s, metal credit cards and savings that are closing in on a mortgage downpayment were ten years away, not ten months.
