Credit card late payment fee returned as goodwill gesture - will this improve credit worthiness?

Penri1980

Once the impact of Covid-19 on the housing market becomes a little clearer, hopefully in a few month's time, I was planning on buying a house, so I decided to check my credit report. I noticed that there was a late payment notice against my Nationwide credit card from end of January this year, which I hadn't been aware of. I've been paying the minimum payment on that card via direct debit, so hadn't noticed that in that month my payment had been returned due to lack of funds (due to an issue with my utilities bill more than trebling in that month). I wasn't informed by text or e-mail, so the payment just rolled over to the following month, along with a £12 fee, and I was unaware. When I read this on my TransUnion credit report, I contacted Nationwide and they advised that as I have not missed any other payments before or since that they would return the fee to me and make the credit agency aware of that. However, I assume that the late payment will still be on my credit file for 6 years, and will still impact my credit worthiness? I'm currently working through the other tasks I've read about on here to improve my credit worthiness, but just wondering if the return of the fee is likely to help in any way?

Thanks in advance for any help

Fighter1986

Fees and arrears are different things.

Did the credit card fall into arrears? Did the card company report the arrears to your credit file?

It's unlikely that if your account was reported in arrears, that this marker will be retrospectively removed, as it's a factual account of the status of your account at the time, but your credit file will also show that the account is now back  up to date, and therefore the one blemish is unlikely to, in and of itself, affect your long term credit worthiness.

But all said, we can't answer your question. You need to check your credit files to see if the account had a missed payment marker and check whether it is retrospectively removed in the future. 

Penri1980

Thank you for your reply. Yes, the Account Status showing for Feb against that card on the Money Supermarket Credit Monitor app was 'Early arrears' and Payment Status of 'payment was up to one month late'. I'll check again over the next few months I'm guessing that all that I've gained from Nationwide's goodwill gesture is that £12 back, rather than any update to my credit file.
That app uses TransUnion, but strangely the credit card doesn't even appear in my credit report on Equifax or Experian. Is that normal?