If you have noticed the downhill drop that your credit score has taken after you missed a few payments here and there on your loans or credit cards, you may be worrying a little bit.
While thirty and sixty day late marks on the credit report are no where near as bad as a one hundred and twenty day late mark, they can still have a negative impact on your overall credit score.
Because of this you may be concerned about whether you can do anything about it.
After all, you have probably heard that all of the negative marks on your credit report will remain on there for seven years.
While that is legally the longest amount of time that any negative mark against you can remain on your credit report, it is not the rule that any markings have to stay on for that long of a time period.
Negative reporting can be removed a month, a year, or five years after it was first placed on your credit report.
If you decide to leave it alone and do nothing about it then yes, that negative mark will remain there for seven years until it automatically rolls off.
If you are concerned about getting your credit score back in shape then you may decide that you do not want to wait that long.
You can make requests to remove a late payment reporting from your credit report.
The first thing you will want to do before you attempt this is to make sure that your account is currently up to date.
Calling your creditor and asking for favors when you owe them last months payment still is probably not the very best of ideas.
But once you are up to date and you have paid a month or two on time you can give your creditors a call.
Simply request that they remove the negative marking on your credit report.
The first person you speak to at the credit center will probably no have the authority to make a judgment call on your account.
You will most likely have to speak to a supervisor.
It is important though to remain polite, especially if you were truly past due.
They had every right to report you and you are trying to ask for a favor so be nice about it.
You may have to speak to a few different people within the company but in the end it may pay off for you.
Just keep focused and try your best.
If that particular company will not help you move on to any other companies that have recently reported you late to the credit report companies.
Any assistance you get is better then nothing at all.
Every inch you raise your credit score is an improvement so if you even just get one company to help you out you have done yourself a great service by not giving up.
The higher you can get your credit score the easier it will be for you to get more loans and credit when the need comes up.