Challenging late payments

lukecooper

Hi,

I've been reading this forum for some time (lurking, if you will!) because I am currently going through a mortgage application. I'm waiting for approval (fingers crossed) having had DIP accepted.

I began to worry slightly because I was aware that the last time I looked at my credit report (ages ago) I could recall that I had a couple of late payments noted, so I got onto Experian and Equifax to have a look, and indeed I had some late payments, namely:

-Mobile phone late payment in Jan 2010 and ?payment in Dec 2009
-Current account "late payment" in Feb 2009, May 2009 and March 2010.

Of course, this led me to panic somewhat about the chances of getting approved. I know it was a little late to be worrying about it given that my application had been in for 10 days or so already, so I decided to look into these late payments. After a couple of emails and 2 short phone calls they have all been removed, and I now have a completely squeaky clean credit report!! I know it's a bit late for this application, and that there are other things that could derail my mortgage approval but I feel so much happier knowing that late payments should be less of an issue.

With my mobile phone supplier, it just took a phone call and an email detailing my concerns that the entry not accurate, and they admitted fault via email and corrected it straight away.

With my current account, I looked back at my statements and could not see anything that would justify a "late payment" marker, so I sent an email through their complaints system, and a few days later (today) I got a phone call to discuss, and they admitted that they were 100% at fault and that the marks were placed due to letters that they sent to me to advise that my account had been dormant for some time at those points (I had moved to another bank) and that they will be removed as soon as possible, and a letter sent out to confirm that I was not at fault for these "late payments".

It hadn't even occurred to me that it was possible to question these markers if it wasn't for this forum, so I just wanted to say thank you very much to everyone on here for your pearls of wisdom.

And I want to encourage people to make sure they double check the validity of any late payments they may have on their credit file- they may not be accurate at all.......