How to get missed payment removed from my credit score

[longli]

Hi all,

When dd was younger I took out a phone contract for her in my name. When she turned 18 and started working she wanted a better phone so we upgraded the contract and changed the payment bank account to hers so she could pay it off with her wages.
We had planned to get the contract changed and officially put into her name, but there was a lot of rigmarole involved (customer services wanted us to be in the same room at the same time and with her being away at uni this wasn’t possible) and we just never got round to doing it.

Last month, she missed her payment due to having no money in her bank and not having an overdraft. The phone company tried to take the payment out and it put her into unarranged overdraft for a day before bouncing back. She didn’t tell me about this until today as she didn’t want me to know she had spent all her money!

I’ve transferred her the money to pay it off but assume this will go down as a late payment. As the contract is in my name, I assume this will go onto my credit file and impact my credit score which I could really do without. Is there a way that I could contact someone to get this removed from my file if I explain the circumstances?

Credit files report factual information about how you run your finances.

They aren't interested in your domestic arrangements and the advice is always to avoid financial arrangements with other adults that could affect your credit history (generally relating to joint accounts, but also not setting payments up that you have no control over) unless you're on the same page financially and this is why.

You can put a note of correction on your credit file, but that may not help as it means that you'll likely fail automatic assessments and most credit providers aren't interested in anything that makes more work for them. If they're assessing thousands of credit card/mortgage applications they don't want to be sifting through them, they want their computer algorithms to do the work for them.

One missed payment on it's own may not affect your chance of being accepted for credit, especially if you keep up with everything else. I really suggest that while the contract is in your name, you make the payment from your bank account and your DD sets up the payment to pay you.

Then this won't happen again but you also need to talk to your DD about the importance of properly running her accounts and keeping up with payments because you can be detrimentally affected by missed payments for up to 6 years. Also to set up an overdraft but pretend it doesn't exist (its not free money to spend!, it's very expensive debt although as a student, she might be entitled to a free overdraft) because it's protection against missed payments.

She also needs to think about how much expensive phones on contract cost and whether she can afford them and if they're worth the money - get her to work out the monthly payment x the 24 month contract. If it's £40+ pm, that's a thousand pounds over 2 years for a phone. Contracts are usually really expensive, and unnecessary when you can get a SIM only plan, that doesn't involve a contract, you just pay month to month by card, for £10 a month or less.

Sorry if it's not what you want to hear.

No there isn't a way to do this as it's factual that a payment was missed. It may not have a massive effect on your file if everything else is up to date

Excellent advice from @BarbaraofSeville .