How Long does it Take for Paid-Off Credit to Report?
Your Credit Minute Show Notes:
- 00:00 What’s up, guys? Credit question of the day. How long does it take for a paid off credit card to report to the credit agencies? So, you probably got my video about a client we have that just paid off $27,000 in credit card debt and his follow up question was, how long does this stuff take to report to the credit agencies? Now, the rule of thumb is and what I tell everyone is, wait. Wait about 30 days, and why do I say 30 days? Well, number one, the credit agencies aren’t actively updating these accounts. These accounts are getting updated from the creditors. So, let’s say it’s an open account, okay? It’s an open account with Capital One. Capital One may be updating their, or updating the credit agencies once per week. They may be updating things real-time daily. They may be updating things one time a month for all of their clients. Think about all of those billions of pieces of data that have to update to the three credit agencies each month. Usually what you’re going to find is the way that you’re billed is the way the credit agencies will report that data.
- 00:58 So, if the last bill you received shows the account as a zero balance and you look at your credit a week later, you’re going to see that the credit report is reflecting that specific data. So, you want to correspond your last statement with the credit report and give it a couple of weeks, okay? Now, if you’ve just paid something off the day you got your statement, you might really just want to wait until the next statement cycles through a couple weeks after that before you actually see the item reporting on the credit agencies as a zero balance. So, it’s a great question. Now, for collections and bad debts, bad news for you guys. It may never report as a zero balance. We see this every day. Literally thousands of items per week that we see that have been paid off, open collections and charge-offs, they’ve been paid. Tax liens that’ve been paid, um, derogatory accounts that have never been updated, okay? The collection agencies will get your money but they’re not going to spend their time and resources to fix your credit report, to update it to show a zero balance, okay? That’s where if you haven’t seen it update for at least, or if you haven’t seen an open collection get paid off and then updated as zero a month later, 30 days later, that’s really when you want to reach out to us so we can work on getting that record removed.
- 02:12 Keep in mind, it could be a blessing in disguise now. Now they’re reporting an inaccurate account. That item can’t stay on your credit report. It’s inaccurate reporting that could be deemed as inaccurate by the credit agencies through the dispute process and we can use that as ammunition to get the entire record expunged, okay? We don’t want to have inaccuracies and garbage on your credit report that really shouldn’t be there, okay?
- 02:34 So, you guys, Nik Tsoukales with Key Credit Repair. How long does it take for the, uh, for a paid-off item to show up on my credit report as paid? Again, short summary, um, keep a 30-day window at least. If after the 30-days something hasn’t reported, check your last billing statement. If the last billing statement didn’t report it, hang tight until the next statement and it typically will, and this is for open accounts. If they’re bad debts and they’re not updated in 30 days, that’s really when you want to reach out to us and put in place a proper dispute to get the item fixes. Thanks, guys. Have a great day.
