A friend of mine had this problem recently. He was going to the bank for a loan to have his short-term debt consolidated. When he was in the bank going through the application it came to light that he had been paying some of his bill that was over due by as much as 2 months. This showed up on the credit record as the creditor had been reporting it. When the bank was looking at the application it decided that in order to lend the money they would have the interest set at over 11%. The late payments and some other factors brought the bank to the stage of increasing the interest charges for any loan they made.
I wanted to show how important it is to have your bill paid on time and also how much it count when applying for a loan.
As usual the Bank holds all the cards and my friend did not take the loan as it was going to be too expensive due to the interest rate.