I have two credit cards, a Bank of America card with an $11,000 limit and a Citi card with a $1,000 limit. I use the Chase card for my day to day purchases and pay it off monthly.
Back in early February I needed to pay a contractor and when it was time to pay could not find my checkbook (nothing bad, just turned out my wife had moved it) so I paid $10,736 on my BoA credit card. Once the charges processed, I paid off the balance 3 days later. By the time the statement cut, the balance was zero and has reflected zero in my account ever since.
Now my wife and I need to relocate for my job, so we need to get approved for a new mortgage. The bank immediately pointed out my credit card usage because I was using over 90% of my available credit. On top of that, my credit score is sitting in the low 700s. Turns out they were showing that the $10,736 is still being reported by Bank of America.
I checked my Citi account, which provides a monthly credit score and history, and my score was consistently above 800 until March, when it dipped and has now been sitting around 705 every month. The person I spoke with at the bank looked over the report they pulled and said there is nothing else of concern - no other debt, no new inquiries, no late payments, etc., and that he thinks the score drop is solely due to the high credit usage. He advised me to talk to BoA and get it corrected and then said I'd be in great shape.
I've spoken with BOA about a dozen times at various levels and have not gotten anywhere. So, I filed a dispute through Transunion based on my statements showing $0. I was notified that it was removed the following day, and it stayed gone for 2 weeks, then reappeared again.
At this point the bank says that since I have documentation showing that the debt is actually paid off, the loan can still be done and the reported debt won't stop me from getting a mortgage. However, he said they can't do anything about the score aspect, and says I am getting a drastically lower interest rate with my lowered score, and I will pay a lot more over the life of the loan because of it. His recommendation was to keep pushing to get my report and score corrected before taking the mortgage so that I can get a better rate with the higher score that I "should" have.
Does all of this sound right? I don't know what I'm missing or where to go from here. We are on a timeline and need to move very soon for my job (deadline in early December) so I have considered just taking the mortgage with the crappier rate, and then once this gets sorted out and my score is higher, hoping to refinance at a higher rate. But at the same time I'm feeling very stuck on the fact that this is happening in the first place - I can't throw money at it to make it disappear because it's ALREADY paid off, and BoA is just running me in circles.
Submitted September 02, 2021 at 08:29AM by nolelah683 https://ift.tt/3thcjLK
