Late payments are not equal; a 90 day or 120 day late pay will cause a large amount of damage and is seen as a very negative mark by lenders. However a 30 day or 60 day late payment will not do much damage.

You can remove a 30 and 60 day late pay from your report by contacting the lender and asking them to erase it. Frequently they will do this in order to keep you as a customer and in their good graces.

A phone call and a letter including the reason is the most effective method. Also be respectful and nice to them because they do not have to remove this mark.

A 90 and 120 day late pay is much more difficult to remove. However if your account is still open then you should contact the lender, and ask for removal of the mark.

It is a good idea to make sure your account is up to date before making this request. Typically if the lender sees a history of late payments they will not remove it.

If the lender is not willing to remove the mark we suggest that you dispute it with the bureaus. You can do this be writing a dispute letter and sending it to each bureau or you can hire a service to do this for you.

This mark will stay on your report for a maximum of seven years. Additionally your account will go to collections after 180 days or six months of delinquency.

The reason a creditor is able to remove this mark from your file is because they report to the bureaus monthly. Thus all they have to do is not report this negative mark, the next month.

Your only way of getting help from the creditor is if you account is currently in good standing. Additionally there is information about negative marks and that they will stay on your report for 7 years.

This is not true; any item can be removed at any point in time, the maximum amount of time an item can remain on your report is seven years. There are a few exceptions such as a bankruptcy. The Fair Credit Reporting Act clearly says that the maximum amount of time is seven years. There is no minimum amount of time an item must stay on your report and can thus be removed at any time.

In sum the first step is contacting the lender, if you still have the account, and then if that is unsuccessful dispute it directly with the bureaus.

For a free credit repair letter used to dispute the bureaus visit us or you can get a free credit repair consultation by calling 1-866-246-7311, also you can see more tips to credit repair by visiting us.

Additionally you can see a ezine article about credit repair services here.