Just want to share my experience and maybe help someone.
My monthly BMW lease payment is due every month on 30. On March 25 I called BMWFS to defer the next 2 lease payments. They said OK and they also sent me a written letter.
When I received the next month/April invoice I saw they indeed applied the 2 payments…very nice, and I really appreciate them for doing that.
Today I was in process to close a deal for a new BMW lease (btw many thanks to @Bacons_C.C for helping me with that), and the dealership calls: my Experian credit score was 699!!! A drop of about 100 points in last month. I use CreditKarma and there was over 800 as usually, so I thought it must be a mistake. I quickly paid to pull the Experian report, and guess what, it was 699…BMWFS reported missed payment for April.
I quickly called them and started a credit dispute, and luckily I have the written letter dated March 25. I will keep you updated if they fix this, but I think is worth sharing in case you did use the lease deferral…check your credit report just in case!
Thank you for reporting this. This is very interesting and may be beneficial to quite a number of people. Hopefully this is not the norm and they simply made a mistake.
That’s my hope too; maybe because they deferred in March 25 and my payment was due on March 30, and they were very busy, they didn’t process my request in time, and their system automatically reported the late payment…this is an educated guess; as long as they fix it and they remove the late payment from the credit report I’m OK
But is worth checking your credit reports, just in case…
Help me understand this. You deferred 2 payments because potentially you had a hardship and then you go out and get a new lease? Just looking at this from a different lens and maybe thats how BMW determined to be the case. I really don’t know the situation just guessing.
That’s not the point in here; I deferred on that period and already paid them back; the point is if you deferred it’s a good idea to check your credit report to make sure BMWFS didn’t do a mistake in reporting a late payment
Quick note: if you have any kind of balance in your account when the payment debits, this can’t affect you. Only if you debit the full amount from a linked card or bank
Is there any language in the deferral letter that says you can’t lease another BMW during that time?
Wow I would talk to a consumer advocate attorney about this if you have the time. If they start doing this with peoples mortgages as well it’ll be a disaster.
I see, so did they report 1 or 2 late payments?
Didn’t this happen back in 2008? Deferrals were granted and then people were hit with non-payment threats.
For now one payment was reported late, the April one; here is a print screen from my credit score and the April invoice for BMWFS showing the deferred payments;
These are Vantage Scores. They’re given away for free by the millions to uneducated consumers, but they’re virtually unused by companies who actually extend credit.
A couple of months ago mine dropped ~55 points into the 700s when a $26k balance reported on a card with a $50k limit, while my FICOs just sat there and said, “Carry on. He’s good for it.”
Yes, you are right. Just learned that…
That was an expensive wine purchase.
I am glad we are not one of them and can afford the finer things in life!
Happened to a lot of people. The business arm, finance dept and IT department were not in sync. So IT systems reported you as late. If you complain, they will fix but the fix will take time to show up.
That was two non-wine purchases.
Point is that common FICO models treat utilization on cards with higher limits (mid $40,000s and higher) differently than Vantage Scores do.
Spoiler alert: My subprime Vantage Scores bounced back the following cycle when the balance on the card updated to $0.
Nothing about my creditworthiness changed during this process, but the Vantage swing was nauseating.
Trying to see if 25k in singles would fit in one of the trunk boxes you put in?