As we know, your payment history accounts for 35% of your credit score. Thus, any late payments can severely harm your score; how much damage depends upon factors like length of lateness and overall history. The best way to minimize their effect is to make payment immediately.
However, when times are tough financially, how can you prioritize payments and still pay them on time? If a bill goes unpaid, the best thing to do would be working closely with your service provider in developing a repayment plan so as to avoid extra fees or late penalties from being added onto your account.
Answering “Can one late internet payment affect my credit score?” depends on various factors, but most importantly how long your payment was late. As soon as a payment falls behind by 30 days or more, its impact can become much greater; potentially causing scores to drop up to 180 points! Furthermore, being late with multiple payments at the same time will have even greater ramifications on your score.
However, if you catch your payment before it becomes 30 days late, it should have no adverse affect on your credit score. Along with making on-time payments to debt, setting up automatic bill payments in online banking or adding due dates to calendar or phone reminders can help protect against further credit score damage.
Credit scores tend to reflect your payment history over the past seven years, so multiple late payments could continue affecting your score until they have faded from your history. But don’t despair: once removed from your report, credit scores typically recover within about six months if any single late payment has been removed; and with on-time payments and positive payment history uphold, these scores should increase even faster!