How Long Does Bad Credit Last in the US, UK and Australia?

You've probably heard that bad credit follows you for seven years. The number gets repeated so often that people treat it as fixed, and inside the US it mostly is. Cross a border, though, and the clock changes. A missed payment that would sit on an American credit report until 2033 could already be wiped from a British or Australian file.

If you've moved countries, or you just want to know how the system works somewhere else, here's how long negative information actually lasts in each place and what it costs to challenge it, plus why "credit repair" isn't the same business from one country to the next.

The seven-year figure is real, and it covers most of what people worry about: late payments, charge-offs, accounts sent to collections, and foreclosures. The Fair Credit Reporting Act sets the limit, and the count starts from the date of the original delinquency, not the date you finally paid.

A couple of items run on their own clocks. A Chapter 7 bankruptcy can stay for 10 years. Hard inquiries drop off after two.

Disputing something you believe is wrong costs nothing. You file directly with Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, and they have 30 days to investigate. What costs money is hiring someone to do it for you, and this is where the US model has its own shape. Most American credit repair companies bill a monthly subscription, often somewhere between $50 and $150, and you keep paying while they work through your file whether or not anything comes off. Federal law (the Credit Repair Organizations Act) bars them from charging before they've done the work, but it doesn't stop the meter from running month after month.

Britain settled on six years for everything from defaults to County Court Judgments, missed payments and bankruptcy markers. Once the six years are up, the entry disappears, even if the underlying debt was never repaid, though a creditor can still pursue some debts separately.

The agencies are the same names with a local footprint: Experian, Equifax and TransUnion UK. You can dispute an entry for free, and if the lender won't budge, you're entitled to add a notice of correction explaining your side that future lenders must read.

One difference worth knowing if you're used to American advertising: the UK doesn't have the same aggressive paid credit repair industry. Firms that manage debt are regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, and the free dispute route does most of what a consumer needs.

Australia runs a shorter but stricter clock than the US: a default stays on a credit file for five years even after the debt is paid, and the bureaus are Equifax, Experian, and illion rather than the American trio. Disputing an incorrect listing with those bureaus is free, the same as in the US, but the paid side of the market works differently. Australian firms such as Real Credit Repairers, an Australia-wide credit repair service, charge their fee only once a listing has actually been removed from the file, rather than the monthly subscription most US credit repair companies bill regardless of results.

Real Credit Repairers disputes defaults and court judgments, along with repayment-history errors, with the Australian credit reporting bodies on the customer's behalf, and its work has been covered by news.com.au and realestate.com.au.

The Australian rules are worth spelling out because the timing catches people off guard. A default can only be listed if it's at least $150 and more than 60 days overdue, and once listed it stays five years from the listing date, not from when you pay. Repayment history sits on the file for two years. A serious credit infringement, the kind noted when a lender believes you've cleared out on a debt, can stay seven. That five-year default window is the one that most often blocks a home or car loan, which is why removing an incorrect listing before applying matters so much there.

Here's the part that surprises expats: your score doesn't travel. A pristine US file means nothing when you land in Sydney or London, because each country's bureaus only see the accounts held inside that country. You start from close to zero and build a local history from scratch.

The retention gaps matter for timing. If you paid off a US default, it still sits on your American report for the full seven years from the first missed payment.

The same paid default in Australia runs five years from when it was listed, so waiting it out is a shorter game. Wherever you've lived, pull your file in that country before you apply for anything big, because the mistake that's quietly holding down your rate might be an error you can dispute for free, or a listing that's already past its expiry date and should have dropped.