After my post yesterday about the negative entries on my credit report, doingitallwrong suggested I send a letter to my creditors asking for a goodwill removal of the negatives from my credit history.
I have an ongoing relationship with one of the creditors, our credit union, where we have taken out two car loans over the past three years. I logged on to the CU site, and sent an e-message asking if they would remove the negatives. I based my letter on a template found on a link provided by doingitallwrong. Here's the response I received:
Thank you for contacting Credit Union via eMessage. We appreciate you taking the time to message us with your request. We greatly appreciate your membership with Credit Union and are happy to hear you have had such a positive experience with us. Although I am able to confirm you have had a very positive payment history with us in the recent past we are not able to reverse or remove late payments reported to the credit agencies unless they were reported in error. If the payments were reported late and it was not the result of an error on our part we are obligated to report them and are not able to remove them. Although we are not able to accommodate your request and remove late payments from your payment history, I would like to assure you that your credit history only reflects the last two years of your payment history. As the payments referenced in your previous message were between the years 2008 and 2011 they should no longer be reporting on your credit. If you have any additional questions or if we can assist you with anything else you are always welcome to contact us …
I struck out.
There is one other CC that has reported negatives. I cancelled that card a long time ago. I have no idea what my account number was. I do have a mailing address that appeared on my credit report, but the above mentioned credit union at least has the incentive of keeping my happy because of my continued business. The other company (Bank of America) really has no incentive to make or keep me happy. So, I doubt that I'll send a request to them.
There was really no harm nor foul in sending the request to the credit union.
Response to my request
February 26th, 2015 at 09:37 pm
February 26th, 2015 at 11:04 pm 1424991878
I'm not sure why they say your credit history only reflects the last two years; surely they realize items stay on your credit report for seven years?
If you want to pursue it, you could try moving up the ranks. I didn't bother with mine, but other people have had success with it.
If not, well, it was worth a shot!
February 26th, 2015 at 11:26 pm 1424993200
February 27th, 2015 at 12:04 am 1424995447
If you want to try another angle you can try a dispute. You file a dispute through each credit bureau that shows this information. The creditors have to validate to the credit bureaus that these are accurate. If they don't respond the credit bureaus will remove the information.