CREDIT REPAIR SERVICES
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When should you be considering credit repair services? If your credit score is less than 720 you will pay more for every dollar you borrow than you otherwise would have to. If your
FICO credit score is significantly less than
that you may be shut out by traditional lenders, denied insurance,
denied a rental, or even turned down for a job or promotion.
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No one, including the best credit repair lawyer, can change a credit report
or force a credit bureau to remove accurate,
well-documented, and timely negative information from a credit report. You
may ask then, "how can I ever fix my credit?" Under credit repair law you can
fix bad credit by removing inaccurate, poorly documented, or questionable information, and information that is older than the legal time limits, in most cases seven years.
The
credit repair law allows you to ask for an investigation of information in your file that you dispute as inaccurate or incomplete. There is no charge for this if you have been denied credit, insurance, or employment because of a negative credit report. You can obtain a free annual copy of your credit report from the major credit bureaus. Getting copies of your credit reports is the first step of credit
restoration and must be done before debt consolidation or
even credit repair counseling.
Once you understand that credit bureaus cover 200
million Americans and some billions of incidents, most by two-letter codes, at
the least possible cost to them and you can see why inaccurate, poorly
documented, and questionable information appears in millions of credit reports,
including yours.
The three major credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion) have set up a central website, a toll-free telephone number, and a mailing address through which you can order your free annual report. To order, go to annualcreditreport.com, call 1-877-322-8228, or complete the Annual Credit Report Request Form and mail it to: Annual Credit Report Request Service, P.O. Box 105281, Atlanta, GA 30348-5281.
CAN YOU BE YOUR OWN Credit REPAIR SERVICE?
If fixing your credit is important and you want to be your own credit repair
attorney you must first tell the credit bureau, in writing, what information you
claim is questionable or inaccurate. Include copies of documents that support your position. Credit bureaus must investigate the items in question — usually within 30 days — unless they consider your dispute frivolous. While it's true you can do your own credit
report repair, it's equally true that you
must be prepared to do it as well as the professional
credit repair attorneys. You have to convince the credit bureau and the creditor
that reported the negative information at first contact that there are
going to be consequences (it's going to cost them money) if they blow you off.
The credit bureaus are supposed to forward all the relevant data you provide about the inaccuracy to the creditor that provided the original information to the credit bureau. After the creditor receives notice of a dispute from the credit bureau, it
is supposed to investigate, review the relevant information, and report the results back to the credit bureau. If the creditor finds the disputed information is inaccurate, it
is supposed to notify all three nationwide credit bureaus so they can correct the information in your file.
That's how it's supposed to work but as a matter of fact the credit bureaus hardly ever forward your information to the creditor. Almost all "self-help" credit report disputes are resolved by the creditor against the consumer. How bad is it? See this Congressional testimony (PDF).
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CREDIT BLOG