Closed credit card – now have late payment on my report!

[Damon]

I closed a credit card over the phone 4 months ago. When I closed it I made sure that the balance is zero (If it wasn’t, they wouldn’t have let me close it, but I made sure anyway).

A month ago I get an automated phone call from the credit card company, telling me that unless I pay the account will go to collection. So I called immediately, and the representative tells me that there were pending finance charges from last moth that they calculated a month later, after the account was already closed. Until that phone call I got no statement, phone call or notification about this pending charge.

Paid the damn balance the same day. Waited a month and pulled my credit report a week ago. The late payment appears, along with a 60 points decrease in my credit score! WTF!

I called the credit card company and asked them to remove it from my credit report, but the representative told me that it’s accurate and that he can’t help me.

Any ideas how to remove this unjust late payment? Should I dispute it with the credit bureaus?

Thank you

[Stacy Wall]

You have few options

There are a few things you can try, but you should know that there’s nothing you can do to force them to remove the item from your credit report. It is legit, even if the circumstances are rather unfair.

This is a good example why closing accounts should NOT be done over the phone – because you have no paper trail. In the future, close accounts by letter and request written confirmation that the account is closed and the balance is zero.

There is no excuse, on their part, for them to not bill you for the accumulated interest, nor for failing to send you a statement in time.

I imagine that what you got charged for is called R.R.I.C. – Recurring Revolving Interest Charges. If you pay on the due date, it takes 3-4 days to process the payment. You get charged for the interest on this time period, which will appear in the next month’s statement.

What I would do is to sent a letter to the credit card company, protesting this reported late payment based on their representative failure telling you that the account is closed in good standing, and their failure to send you a statement. It might not do any good, but worth a try.

If this doesn’t help, try to dispute it with the credit bureaus. You have a slim chance of actually removing it, but if the dispute is rejected, you have a right to add a 100 word statement to your report, explaining your position. It won’t raise your score, but creditors will review it and it may help in future applications.

Please do come back and tell us if and how the problem was resolved.

Good luck

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