Two Christmases ago, my wife went a little crazy with a Chase Disney credit card we had. I didn't realize at the time that there was a balance on it, so I missed two payments and got a 30-day late notice attached to reports at all three primary credit reporting agencies (CRAs).

Once I realized that the payment was late I had paid the balance off completely and then canceled the card. In retrospect, I probably didn't need to cancel it, but at the time it was easier than keeping it around.

So, for the last couple years I've had this 30-day late notice hurting my credit scores. I had gone through some trouble last year to get a paid collection item removed from my reports, but it had never occurred to me to dispute the 30-day late payment. I knew the item was legitimate, and I hadn't considered disputing it simply for the fact that I had actually been late paying the card (it was in my name, so I was legally responsible even though my wife is the one who ran up the bills).

Recently, however, I read a post over at the CreditBoards.com forums that gave some, uh, creative ways to dispute items that are legitimate but may be technically flawed for some reason. The post's author listed a whole host of reasons that one might be able to get an item removed. So, armed with that information, I took another look at my latest credit report to see what I could find wrong with it.

Before I disputed anything on my report, I called Chase to see if I could get anywhere with a customer service representative. After talking with a few different people, though, it appeared that my card account was no longer in their systems. One CSR said I could try sending a letter to their "Correspondence" department to see if they could help me out, and after taking down the info, I hung up. I never bothered to send anything to that department.

In looking at the data from my account, something did stand out as a discrepancy. Basically, the CRAs were reporting a high balance of something like $785, but the highest monthly balance reported was in the $740 range. I had noted that one of the legitimate reasons for a dispute based on technical details was inaccurate balance history. So, I selected that option and stated that there was a difference between the high balance amount and the highest monthly balance amount. Note that I never actually claimed that either balance was incorrect.

Today, I received a notice by e-mail from Experian that the disputed item had been resolved. I logged in to find two blessed words next to the account:

Account Deleted

I decided also to log into TransUnion's TrueCredit service, in which I am currently enrolled in a 30-day trial, to see how it affected my score. It didn't appear to affect it much, but when I looked at my TransUnion score, I noticed that it was up about 30 points. So I checked my TU report, and sure enough the same account was missing from that one as well. (I believe the reason that my Experian score wasn't affected much has to do with the fact that most of the inquiries from my recent AOR went to that company, so the effect of removing one 30-day late notice was minimal compared to the negative influence of those added inquiries.)

Equifax still showed the payment, but I'm guessing that they will follow suit shortly. Once that happens, I will have no bad items on any of my reports. From then on, only time and balance will matter.