Proven Strategy to Remove Late Payments from Credit Reports
24 Nov 2025 · 8 min
Daniel Rosen explains how to write a goodwill deletion letter to remove late payments from your credit report. Payment history counts for 35% of your FICO score, and a single 30-day late can take 9 months to 3 years to recover from. The strategy involves telling your story persuasively and sending requests to multiple creditors.
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Hey, credit heroes. There is a simple strategy that can remove late payments from your credit report and boost your credit score up to 192 points. And today I'm going to show you exactly how to do it. And I'm going to give you all the tools you need to get it done. So you better stick around.
So the big question is, how can we take our passion for helping people with their credit and turn it into a successful business without taking loans, without spending a fortune by bootstrapping it from nothing so we can help the most people and still become highly profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Daniel Rosen, and welcome to Credit Repair Business Secrets.
Okay, if this is your first time listening to my podcast, every week I give credit repair tips and advice on bootstrapping your business from nothing. So be sure to click to subscribe now and get ready to start changing lives. Okay, let's get into this. Everyone knows what a late payment is. You have a bill and a due date, but for whatever reason, you don't make the payments on time. It's easy to understand because most of us have done it. A LendingTree survey found that 64% of Americans had been late when paying a bill. And the three most common late payments are utility bills, credit card bills, and cable or Internet bills. Late payments are a fact of life because shit happens. People miss making payments for many legitimate reasons. Some people miss payments because they're in the military, they were on deployment, and they didn't receive the bill. Others miss payments because their medical provider sent them a confusing bill that they thought the insurance company had already paid. Sometimes people think they have auto pay set up. When they don't, checks get lost in the mail. And sometimes people lose their jobs and simply can't pay their bills on time because they just just don't have the money. One of our Millionaires Club members, Bruce Politano, told me that even he missed a few payments because he was in a motorcycle accident and he spent 11 days in the hospital. My point? Shit happens. The only problem is, payment history has a massive impact on your credit scores. And lenders consider late payments to be a big red flag that they hold against you. According to fico, payment history is the single largest factor that impacts a person's credit score, accounting for 35% of the total credit score. And because credit scores have a range between 300 and 850, that means that late payments can change your score up to 192 points. Those 192 points can make a huge difference. They can take you from having poor credit to very good credit, or from fair credit to excessive, exceptional credit. This means that if you master the process of removing late payments from credit reports, you've mastered the most impactful part of credit repair. Here's the thing to remember. Late payments aren't reported on your credit report until they're at least 30 days past due. And after that it'll get placed into one of these buckets. 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, 120 days, 150 days past due and eventually charged off. Status meaning that the creditor has written the debt off as a loss. If you make a late payment, your creditor will report it to the bureau based on this schedule, and the later it is, the more damage it's going to cause to your credit score. For example, depending on how high your credit score was to start, it can take between nine months and three years for your score to fully recover from one 30 day late payment. For a 90 day late payment, it can take between nine months and seven years. This is because late payments that are 90 days or longer are considered a key derogatory item. So even if you're already late, you need to make your payments as soon as possible so the problem doesn't get worse. On top of that, most credit card companies pull your credit every so often as a soft inquiry to see if you relate on your other accounts or or to see signs of financial difficulties with other creditors. If they see any late payments with other creditors, they may lower your available credit line or even increase your interest rate. Even if you've always made payments on time with that credit card, it's so terrible. Yet they're allowed to do this. In addition to how late the payment is, the number of late payments and the balance owed also impact your credit scores. That's why you must educate your clients about avoiding late payments whenever possible. That way, they're in a great position to dispute when life eventually happens. Here's why this is important. Believe it or not, all it takes to remove late payments is a little creativity and empathy and a process called a goodwill deletion. A goodwill deletion is a request. It's not a demand. It's where you politely ask or beg the creditor to remove one or more late payments by explaining the very good reason why you missed the payment and by promising to make payments on time in the future. Goodwill deletions only work on open accounts that are current. A creditor will only consider your goodwill deletion request if the account is current, meaning there is no past due amount. Now, if the account is closed, try removing the entire account and not just the late payments. Because the goodwill deletion is based in part on the fact that you had a previous stellar payment history. Here's what you need to know. If you have an open and current account and a great payment history, but you suddenly have one or a handful of late payments, that's when it's time for a goodwill deletion. If you don't already have a goodwill deletion letter template, don't worry, you can download one right now for free at creditrepaircloud.com dispute letters goodwill deletion and I'll also put a link to it in the show Notes. Now a goodwill deletion letter works by sending it to the creditor, asking them very nicely to remove the late payment and providing them with a very good reason why the payment was late and why it won't happen again. It has to be a great story, a tearjerker, something that really moves them. Explain that your child was born that month, or you were hospitalized, or there was a massive power outage, or your family was affected by Covid, anything extremely difficult that came up that made payment impossible. Also, remember you're asking the creditor for a favor, so be very nice. If the main customer service address doesn't respond, send it to other departments or other individuals. Google their company, look up their managers, directors, or even the CEO, literally anyone, and send a separate letter directly to them. This is called the saturation technique and it's a proven tactic that can help your clients. So go the extra mile. Here's my final point. Most of us have missed a payment or two. Usually it's because some life event got in the way. But just because you were late doesn't mean that it should hurt your credit for years to come. So put in the effort, go the extra mile, use a bit of creativity and apply polite pressure and more often than not, you'll get the results you need. And if you do this for a credit repair client, they're gonna love you for it. And just a reminder, this podcast is.
Brought to you by Credit Hero Score.
Credit Hero Score is the only credit monitoring service that integrates directly with Credit Repair Cloud. Get instant access to your credit reports and scores by signing up for a seven day trial for only $1. Sign up right now at creditheroscore.com and now for my favorite part of the episode. Every week I feature one of our credit heroes inside our credit repair cloud. Facebook community so you can see firsthand what real people are doing as they run and grow their business. And once again, today's spotlight is on Steve Gomez. I usually like to change up our spotlights, but Steve posted a thoughtful message that I'd really like to share. Steve said, I've learned over the years of trying different ways of disputing that by just keeping it simple gets me the best results. There's many ways to dispute. You just have to find out what works for you and what can get your client the best results. Remember, there is no shortcut and no magic letter to get things deleted. Some folks will say consumer law, others metro2 and and more and more will say factual is the way to go. I've tried most and factual has what's been the best for me. Why? Because if I have to take my disputes to litigation or the CFPB rare cases, I'm not sounding like an attorney, which I'm not by stating a law that they already know or some kind of code or language that only the furnishers use so wouldn't help me in court or the CFPB when I'm doing my disputes. I'm building a story, writing a book if you will. Setting all my clients up for pre litigation if I need to use that route. Never got tunnel vision in this game. Always keep things changing up because using the same reason and instruction every round isn't doing anyone any justice. Stay sharp Credit heroes. There's sharks out and about, so make sure you do your due diligence when looking for help. Boom. Mic drop. I can't top that Steve, so I'll end by saying if you don't already have a credit repair cloud account, check it out. It's the software that most credit repair businesses in America run on. Just sign up for a 30 day free trial at creditrepaircloud.com freetrial. And if you'd like to change lives and grow your own credit repair business, check out our Credit Hero Challenge. It's a live experience that has helped tons of credit heroes to get certified in disputing and to gain confidence as they run their credit repair business on a solid foundation so they can change a whole lot of lives and make a great living in the process. We're starting the next challenge very soon, so you want to join before the doors close. Or you can have a long wait until the next one. So sign up right now@creditherochallenge.com if you're finding value in the things that I share on this podcast. Click below to subscribe and follow. Also, give me a five star review or share the show and help me to change more lives. If you'd like to read the show notes, they're posted on my blog. If you have a question or a comment, drop it down below because I read each and every one of them. I would love to hear from you and I'll respond as soon as I can. If you want to learn more top secret Credit Repair disputing strategies, check out my interview with Bruce Politano. So take care Credit Hero and keep changing lives.
Hey everybody, it's Daniel again, and really quick. I'd like to invite you to join what I believe is the best thing we have ever, ever created inside the Credit Repair cloud community. And it is a challenge that we call the Credit Hero Challenge. If you're just planning out your business or you're just getting it started and you dream of having a successful business of your own so you can quit your 9 to 5 and fire your boss and have financial freedom or so you can add another revenue stream to your existing business, if that's your dream, you need to get into this challenge. We created this challenge to help you to create and launch your very own Credit Repair business to build a proper foundation for a really successful business. This challenge is going to help you to understand the strategy, the tactics and all the things you need to be successful at Credit Repair. It really is the greatest thing we have ever built and it will change your life. So I recommend you do it right now. So stop everything, pause this audio, go online and go to creditherochallenge.com that's creditherochallenge.com and join the next challenge. And there's a challenge that's starting in just a few days. So go get started right now@creditherochallenge.com.
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