I am writing this because 1) I'm angry; 2) I hope this might help someone; and 3) I don't care what anyone thinks about me. I have credit issues and I'm human......
I raised a great kid all by myself. I had no assistance from others and no child support. The early days were very hard. I made thirteen thousand dollars a year. I had four jars- one for food money, one for car money, one for rent, and one for day care. Turns out, financially, those were the good old days.
As time went on, I was hired by a community bank that invested a lot of money and faith in their employees. Every year, for eight years, I got a $5,000 raise. Another period of time that wasn't so bad.
But in 2006, this bank was bought out by a bigger fish from a bigger community. The last raise I saw was in January of that year, prior to the merger.
By the time 2009 rolled around, I was having a hard time keeping up with my bills. Then, an awful thing happened- I forgot to pay my Target bill. My first late payment. This doesn't sound like the end of the world, right? Well, this was at the time that everyone was defaulting on their credit cards and the credit card companies took advantage of a policy that if you pay late on any of your credit cards, any of your other creditors could jack up your interest rates. So, now I was looking at 19.00-21.99% interest on multiple cards. This started a snowball effect. So, I thought I was doing a good thing by signing up for credit card counselling. HUGE mistake. I thought that surely this was better than bankruptcy, especially with only one late payment on a little Target card on my record.
Well, my credit score went from a seven hundred something to a five hundred something, even though no payments were missed during the transition into the program.
So, I spent the last three years diligently working my way through this. Then, this past summer, my dad had a heart attack. I was very distracted by this and forgot to pay my $19 Home Depot payment. I called to explain, but they were uninterested. However, my credit score was still slowing increasing month by month.
It took me THREE YEARS for me to bring my score up 100 points. I was super proud, because in September, I paid off six credit cards. I thought this would really help push my score back over the 700 mark.
Well, the first week of November, I applied for a student loan. Alex finally got accepted into UCF and is scheduled to start in January. We have most of his expenses covered, so I just needed a small loan. However, I was denied for my credit. I couldn't understand why.
Well, when I got my monthly credit report monitoring statment, I saw that my score had plummeted almost 60 points. The reason was Home Depot reported me derogatory in October. I thought this HAD to be a mistake, because that was one of the cards I paid off in September (on time, I might add).
So, I called them. They said they didn't report me for October. I read the verbiage from the credit statement, and the woman said, "Oh, well we did report you because you were delinquent at SOME point in time." What? They didn't report me when I was late, yet when I paid them off, then they decide to report me a month later?
So I emailed the company several times. They told me they follow the Fair Credit Reporting laws and their reporting has integrity. Bullshit. If the reporting had integrity, they would have reported me accurately when I was actually late.
Because here's the next thing creditors look at- when was your last late payment. So instead of being in July, 2012, mine in now October, 2012.
There's no winning. Three years to come up 100 points, and one $19 dollar late payment set me back 60 points.
So some "kind" lady from Home Depot finally emailed me last Friday advising she would try to help me, and she would contact me no later than yesterday, but I never heard from her.
So lesson learned- I don't know. Should I have set the account up on auto payments- maybe, but that means you have to know you will have the money on time every month. And if you don't, the late charges are double the payment. Should I have not taken the card out in the first place? Maybe, but I had to rent out my house because I couldn't sell it and I had to work in another town. The tenants destroyed it, doing more than $10,000 in damages. I had to fix the home on credit.
Lesson learned- once you make one mistake with your credit, don't count on ever being able to use credit again without opening a vein for creditors to bleed you dry. And, never sign up for credit counselling.
To end, this is one of the ONLY negative posts you will ever see from me, but I feel very betrayed by the system, especially in today's economy. And HOME DEPOT SUCKS.
No comments:
Post a Comment