Here is some background: I co-signed for an auto lease to a (now former) friend, and he was absolutely terrible at getting payments in on time. During the 4 years of the lease, he had about 20 late payments...and at least half of those I had to help him with because he just didn't have the money. Needless to say, that pretty much ended our friendship and screwed up my credit report for a few years to come.
I plan on purchasing my first home in the spring of 2008, so I decided to start working on correcting mistakes and baddies early on. The only baddies I have are the lates on this particular car lease account. I have NEVER been late on any other accounts, and my only "fault" is having too much revolving debt...which I am working on right now.
I sent a GW letter to VW Credit (the auto lease provider) basically saying that I understand that as a co-signer I am legally responsible for the account just as much as the other guy, but it would be so helpful to have these lates removed since based on my credit history, I am a responsible person aside from this joint account.
About a week later, I received one of those form letters saying that they cannot remove the lates because that would be "illegal" and they listed the dates of all the late payments.
But...I just purchased updated reports and scores from all 3 CRAs and both TU and EQ have NO lates reported for this account! Experian, is another story. It has almost all the lates plus says that the account status is "OK/Was past due." So I am disputing that. I actually disputed that account before and got the annoying EX response saying that they already investigated and won't do so again.
This time, when I dispute, I am mentioning the Fair Credit Reporting Act, Section 611, which states that the CRA must reinvestigate a legitimate claim that an account information is not being reported accurately. We will see what EX actually does this time.
Anyway, long post, but the moral of the story is don't give up on your GW letters and disputing. Being persistent pays off!