McMillan Law's office is in Tampa. I represent people in St. Petersburg and everywhere else in Florida, and the free case review happens by phone or online, so you don't have to drive anywhere to get started.
Last reviewed October 8, 2026 by Jackson McMillan, Florida attorney
Storm repairs, a refinance, and a late payment you didn't make
If Hurricane Helene's storm surge in September 2024 or Hurricane Milton in October 2024 damaged your St. Petersburg home, you may have applied for a cash-out refinance, a home equity line, or a repair loan to cover what insurance didn't. That application may be the first time in years anyone has looked closely at your credit.
Then the lender's report shows a 30-day late payment from the month the storm hit, even though your servicer agreed to pause payments. Or a contractor's bill your insurer paid turns up as a collection. Or a card you paid off with settlement money still shows a balance.
Errors like these can raise your rate or sink the loan you need to rebuild. The upside is that you can often document them with paper you already have.
Rebuilding in St. Petersburg and across Pinellas County
I represent homeowners in St. Petersburg, throughout Pinellas County, and around the Tampa Bay area who are trying to borrow their way back after the 2024 storms, whether the house is in Shore Acres, Old Northeast, or Kenwood, a condo downtown, or a place near the Gulf beaches. Helene and Milton damaged many homes and rentals across Pinellas, and the flood of paperwork that followed is where reporting mistakes can creep in.
The errors worth checking first:
- Late payments reported for months covered by a written forbearance, deferral, or disaster payment plan.
- On-time payments that a servicer credited late.
- Contractor, utility, or medical bills sent to collection after they were paid.
- Balances still showing on debts you cleared with insurance or settlement money.
Renting instead of owning, or hit by more than one problem? I also wrote guides on getting a security deposit back in St. Petersburg and on bank and payment app fraud refunds in St. Petersburg.
If a lender pointed to your credit report when it slowed or denied your St. Petersburg refinance, send me that letter with your reports, and I'll tell you which errors are worth disputing and how.
Why the dispute has to go through the credit bureaus
Credit reports are governed by a federal statute, the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). It splits the job between the credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion) and the companies that send them information, which the law calls furnishers. Your mortgage servicer is a furnisher, and so is any collection agency.
When you dispute with a bureau, it has 5 business days to tell the furnisher and pass along what you sent. The furnisher must then investigate, review your documents, report the results, and fix or delete the error with every nationwide bureau it reports to (15 U.S.C. § 1681s-2(b)). If it can't verify the late payment, that entry has to be corrected or removed.
Here's the trap: calling or writing only to your servicer doesn't start that duty, and the FCRA doesn't let you sue a lender for ignoring a dispute you sent it directly. Write to each bureau that shows the error, attach your proof, and mail the servicer a copy.
Paper that turns a storm-season error into a provable one
The federal appeals court that covers Florida has held that a claim against a furnisher needs an inaccuracy that is objectively and readily verifiable. A dispute that comes down to "my servicer and I disagree about what the deal meant" is harder. One backed by a letter approving the deferral stands on firmer ground. Gather:
- The written forbearance, deferral, or payment plan approval.
- Bank statements showing when each payment left your account.
- Your insurer's payment records for any bill that went to collection.
- Payoff or paid-in-full letters.
- The lender's denial or rate letter, and the date you applied.
If your arrangement was made by phone, write down the date, the name of the person you spoke with, and what you were told. Send those notes to me anyway, because paired with your payment records they can still help.
One refinance wrinkle: the federal seven-year limit on old negative items doesn't apply to a report for credit of $150,000 or more, so a mortgage lender may see older history than a card issuer would.
What the servicer or bureau may owe you
If a bureau or furnisher negligently mishandles your dispute, the FCRA allows your actual damages: a higher rate on the refinance, a denied repair loan, extra costs, and the stress of watching a rebuild stall. For a mishandled dispute, the damages that count are generally the ones that came after the company failed to fix the error, which is why dates matter.
A willful violation (one committed knowingly or recklessly) opens the door to statutory damages between $100 and $1,000 as an alternative to actual damages, and to punitive damages on top. Either way, a case needs a concrete harm, like the wrong report reaching your lender. Florida state courts, including the Sixth Judicial Circuit for Pinellas and Pasco counties, require that just as federal courts do.
The FCRA also shifts reasonable attorney's fees and court costs to the company when the consumer wins. You don't pay me unless you win. I take these cases on contingency: no attorney's fees and no case costs owed to me unless you recover money. If a case is lost, a court can sometimes order the losing side to pay the other side's court costs, and some Florida laws, including the security deposit and deceptive practices statutes, also let the winner recover attorney's fees from the loser. I explain that risk before anything is filed, and every term is in a written agreement before you sign. My main page on credit report errors and FCRA claims lays the damages rules out in a table.
How long each step takes
- Day 1
The bureau receives your written dispute. Certified mail gives you proof of the date.
- Within 5 business days
The bureau must forward your dispute and documents to the servicer or collector.
- Within 30 days
The bureau generally must finish. It gets up to 15 more days if you send new, relevant information during the first 30, and 45 days in all if you disputed after your free annual report.
- 5 business days later
Written results are due. You can also ask how the bureau checked the item, and it must describe its process within 15 days of your request.
- 2 years
Your deadline to sue, counted from when you discover the violation and capped at 5 years after it happened.
Your St. Pete checklist before the next loan application
- Ask the lender which report it used. A lender that denies you or offers worse terms because of a credit report generally has to tell you which bureau supplied it.
- Pull all three reports and circle every wrong late payment, balance, or collection.
- Gather your storm-era paper: forbearance letters, bank statements, insurer payments, and payoff letters.
- Write to every bureau reporting the mistake, using certified mail and sending copies rather than originals. My credit report dispute guide with a sample letter walks through what to say.
- Look again in three to six months to make sure a correction stuck.
- Send it to me. Upload your reports, the bureau results, and the lender's decision for a free case review before you reapply.