Late payments remain on your credit report for up to seven years from the original delinquency date, the date the payment was not made. Even if you pay the late balance, the late payment will still remain on your Equifax credit report for seven years. The seven-year rule is based on when the delinquency occurred. Whether the entire account is deleted depends on whether you updated it after the non-payment.
If you did, late payments that have been seven years old will be eliminated, but the rest of the account history will be preserved. The 7-year rule means that your credit report only reflects payments, balances and accounts that have been used in the past 7 years. A common misconception is that “after seven years you don't have to pay for it anymore”. This is not true.
The specific law allows a creditor to report the negative status of their accounts to credit bureaus for up to seven years. It has nothing to do with how responsible you are for the debt. Your personal credit report includes appropriate contact information, including a website address, a toll-free phone number, and a mailing address. Other services, such as credit repair, can cost you up to thousands of dollars and only help eliminate inaccuracies in your credit report.
Unsecured debts, such as credit card debt and personal loans, are generally sent to a collection agency or can be managed in-house. You can build strong credit over time by making timely payments, monitoring your credit report, monitoring your credit usage, and avoiding unnecessary credit inquiries. Most creditors and collection agencies simply abandon collection efforts after losing the ability to report on the credit of an account. If the debt no longer affects your credit rating, it may be tempting to not pay the outstanding balance.
Some credit bureaus even ignore medical expense collection accounts that are less than six months old. This may take some time, but with a little help and a little time, you can remove fraudulent or unfair items from your credit report. To challenge an item in your credit report, you'll need to call each credit agency and file a dispute. However, it is not recommended to close old credit cards and instead continue to use them as much as possible.
Building a good credit history, paying your bills on time, and getting more credit (slowly) will help you improve your score. The specific number of years an adverse credit mark lasts on your credit report depends in part on the type of debt in question. A letter of good will to a creditor is another option that can sometimes get the negative element removed from a credit profile.
