Advice for how to fight a 30 day late mortgage on credit report

[Jordan Meyer]

Hi, I put a loan into forbearance during the pandemic. Prior to this, I had automatic payments deducted on time for about 5 years. After forbearance ended, they told me over the phone that automatic payments would resume.

They didn't. And by the time I caught it it was 30 days late and had appeared on my credit report.

I've called them and asked them to look back at the call recordings, but haven't had success. What should I do? Hire a credit attorney?

Your advice is appreciated!

[Chris Mason]

Never trust a mortgage on auto pay again.

Broadly speaking, 3 groups of people with less-than-perfect credit.

Group 1. Pattern of late payments. Never their fault, it's always someone else's fault. These people's claims aren't credible, so tbh I kind of ignore the reasons provided. Couldn't make the car payment because the dog ate the credit card they were going to make their car payment with, and then the sister in law stole their last beer, so you know they had to make a choice... whatever. 

Group 2. Perfect credit, but for one blemish, they always tell me up front exactly what happened, I tend to believe and trust what these folks say. OP, I'm guessing you are in this group.

Group 3. All others. For example people with 1 credit card late, and 1 mortgage late. This is the smallest group.

Groups 1 and 2, together, are easily 80% of what we see.

A very clear pattern presents itself with group 2: mortgages on auto pay. These are 100% totally responsible people, for the most part. But if there's 1 thing that will go wrong, it's a mortgage on auto pay. With stunning regularity. Cars and credit cards on auto pay do not seem to have this problem, just mortgages. No pattern with the lender or loan servicer or anything like that, the pattern is mortgage on auto pay.

So, like I said.

Never trust a mortgage on auto pay again.

That's by far the #1 top thing you can do. 

Lurkers, this post is directed at you, and I'm going to toss 3 city names out there just to increase the probability of my own future/past clients reading this via keyword alerts: Oakland, Sacramento, San Jose.