The devil is in the details — and there needs to be some exorcizing and that takes awhile.

In the meantime, some local mortgage lenders and brokers who followed my saga with Wells Fargo, as logged here, have been emailing me questions and advice.

Here are some tips on how not to derail the loan process — or how to keep a good credit score in general — from Scott Senner, a mortgage consultant with First Commercial Bank in Edmond. The information came from Loantoolbox.com. Some of it I knew, some of it I should have known, and some of it was a big surprise to me.

Take this: “Don't allow any accounts to run past due — even one day!” That should be no surprise to anyone.

But this was a surprise. It's infuriating, in fact. It might surprise you: “Most cards offer a grace period, however, what they don't tell you is that once the due date passes, that account will show a past due amount on your credit report. Past due balances can ... drop scores by 50-plus points.”

Common civility and the traditions of a family newspaper will not allow me to express my reaction to learning that.

Here are a few more:

•  “Don't apply for new credit of any kind.”

Whenever your credit is pulled by a would-be lender or creditor, your credit score loses points. Not news to me.

•  “Don't pay off collections or charge offs during the loan process.”

Ugh. “Unless you can negotiate a delete letter, paying collections will decrease the credit score immediately due to the date of the last activity becoming recent.”