What Is A Credit Report

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Q. Every month, I have my electric bill (I live in Michigan; my electricity provider is DTE) emailed to me. I usually pay the bill online when I get email that it's ready to be paid. Unfortunately my emailed bills got tagged as spam for 3 months, and I didn't realize it. As a result, I didn't pay my electric bill for 3 months. I got a "last resort" paper bill from DTE (and a disconnection notice!!) last week, and I promptly paid the bill. But that isn't the problem. The problem is this: Because of the unpaid bills, I'm almost sure that DTE has put some bad information on my credit report. This is really upsetting to me, because until now, my credit report was perfect, and was my bargaining chip for lots of things. I have a 13-year credit history with a score in the high 700's. What can I do to reverse this? Who do I talk to in order to explain that it was a total mishap? To whom do I explain that my email is fixed, and that it'll never happen again? Do I talk to the credit bureau? (Which one?) Do I talk to DTE? Do I talk to the 3rd party company that handles the ebilling, MyCheckFree? It's all such a mess now, and I don't want to be on the phone for 3 hours with mean people. Any help?

A. First, check your credit report to see if it is there. If it is contact the company to explain what happened and ask then to retract the report. If that fails then contact the credit bureau. By law they must include you explanation in the report. My guess is that it was not reported. In the 80's when phone costs were still high I worked at home and huge phone bills. I often made partial/late payments and got warning notices. I was never disconnected and nothing was on my report. In all I wouldn't be real worried about this. In my experience, utilities don't usually report to credit rating agencies. And even if they did report it, there isn't too much you can do about it. You aren't going to get it removed because it is what it is. You were 3 months late paying. As someone pointed out, you can provide your side and have the credit reporting agencies add it to the file. You'd have to do that with all three. But I doubt it's worth it, as if this is the only thing on an otherwise perfect record, I doubt it will make any real difference to lenders, with or without the explanation.

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