Much of the criticism about credit repair companies and law firms center around the fact that you can do almost everything they do by yourself. You don’t actually need to hire a professional. That’s true. You can do almost everything on your own, if you have the time.

But even more importantly, do you have the expertise? A recent article from the San Francisco Chronicle outlines the problems of credit reports and how difficult it can be to get even inaccurate information deleted from a report.

And while the FCRA was designed to protect consumers there is a definite bias in the word of a creditor or a credit bureau over the word of an ordinary consumer.

The credit bureaus are big business. They have the big guns that can make your life miserable and it may not even be your fault.

If you need credit repair, do you really want to go it alone?
Read this article before you decide.

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For quite some time it has been possible to get a copy of your credit report for free one time each year from each of the big three credit reporting agencies, TransUnion, Equifax and Experian. However, this did not generally include the credit score which is a fundamental part of your credit story. Getting the credit score included an additional charge.

But now it is likely that more U.S. consumers will receive their credit scores for free because of the new rules enacted with CARD that govern loans and credit cards according to Sandra Braunstein, director of the Federal Reserve’s consumer and community affairs division.

In remarks to the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit, Braunstein remarked that one of the four options for lenders to comply with the new rules is to notify loan applicants of their credit scores. She indicated that she believed that many creditors would use the credit score disclosure exceptions to satisfy the requirements of disclosure for applicants denied credit.

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If your old credit card debt has been charged off by the original lender but subsequently sold to a collection agency the new collection agency may change the last active date to the time that they procured the bad loan.

However, that does not change the DOFD of the Date of First Delinquency. The last active date can change at any time based upon transfers in between collection agencies and so forth but no collection agency has the right to change the DOFD.

Accounts will fall off from your credit report based upon the DOFD regardless of how often the loan has changed hands in the collection process.

If the time has passed from the DOFD and the item is still showing on your credit report a simple credit repair letter should be sufficient to get it removed.

Don’t be fooled by last activity dates as that can change again and again until eternity passes but the DOFD is the same no matter what and all negative credit falls off eventually after the time passes from that date only.

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As you are attempting to repair your credit, you may need to pay off some old debts. In that case, it is in your best interest if you can get the lender to delete it from your credit report. So how do you do that? You negotiate.

In negotiation you may win or you may lose but if you don’t even try you lose for sure. So ask the lender if you can settle the debt for a certain amount and request that if you do that they delete the information from your credit report.

Hopefully, you can get them to come to an agreement. However, you must get the agreement in writing in order for it to be legally binding. Don’t just take their word for it. Get it in writing. Make sure they follow through.

And say “Thank you”.

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Having bad credit can make your life difficult. Negative listings on your credit report and low credit scores can cost you substantially more money. You are forced to pay higher deposits for everything from utilities, Internet services and satellite TV and if something happens and you need money it is almost impossible to borrow it. When you have bad credit what you really need is a quick fix to take care of it.

Credit reports and scores can be repaired for even the worst of bad credit cases. You do not necessarily even need the help of a professional, however, it is a time-consuming process and it does take some knowledge and expertise to get it done right in a timely manner. It may be an advantage to consult a professional credit repair service. Credit repair services can help you to fix the current problems that you face and they should also offer some informative education about credit that can help you to keep your credit clean for the long run.

A credit repair program may be able to assist you in working directly with your creditors in order to negotiate arrangements to pay off the bad debt with a lower settlement or perhaps a decrease or elimination of the interest part of the payment. Good credit repair programs also have an educational aspect about responsible spending and financial responsibilities.

When you begin the process of credit repair the first step is always to get a copy of your current credit reports. Make a detailed list of any current obligations and the payments that are due on each one. Make sure that your finances are under control and your income is solid before attempting credit repair or you will be defeating your purpose in repairing your credit and it is better to wait.

If your payments are excessive for the amount of income that you have you may need to contact your creditors or have the credit repair program representative contact them to see if you can negotiate a payback schedule that you can live with. It is often possible to get a settlement that allows for a lower monthly payment from reducing the principal or lowering or eliminating the interest. With effective negotiations you may be able to garner a payoff of as low as 50 cents on the dollar.

It may also be advantageous for you to consolidate all of your bills into just one payment either by getting a debt consolidation loan or through negotiation with your creditors and the credit repair program. That can really simplify your financial life and the stress is greatly reduced when you only have one bill to pay.

If there is erroneous or inaccurate information on your credit report you need to issue some disputes to the credit bureaus and try to get the negative listings removed. A professional credit repair service should have some good experience in handling disputes or you may just research sample dispute letters and draft your own.
You need credit repair in order to stabilize a troubled financial situation and start over on a better path. A professional credit repair service can help you do this. It is also crucial to learn what you can about preventing credit problems and avoiding these kinds of situations in the future.

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All too often having good credit is a necessary part of life. We all need to have good credit in order to qualify for mortgages, car loans and credit cards. However, for many of us past financial problems and times of financial difficulties have destroyed our good credit. There are some steps we can take to begin to repair our credit and restore some stability to our financial lives.

Before you begin to repair your credit you will need to get a copy of your current credit report from each of the three main credit-reporting agencies, TransUnion, Equifax and Experian. You can take advantage of the free report that you are entitled to each year or you can pay a fee and receive either a separate report from each company or a tri-merged report that contains all three. It may be simpler to assess the information on your reports if you have it all on one report.

Once you have your reports, you will need to examine them for inaccuracies and erroneous information. It has been estimated that as many as 70% of all reports do contain mistakes and inaccuracies so there may be some obvious mistakes that you can attend to immediately. You should also check for older and outdated accounts that have passed the statute of limitations in your state. Many times you can get those listings removed on that basis alone.

Make sure that your credit report is showing your highest credit limits. Many creditors under-report credit limits or fail to report them at all. A large percentage of your credit score is based upon your available credit compared to the credit you have used so it is advantageous for you to make sure that all of your highest credit limits are reported. It is also important to keep your debt level below 20% of the credit available to you. One trick to quickly increase your credit score is to just get a creditor to raise your credit limits.

Oftentimes duplicate accounts will show up on a credit report. Even if they are not reporting negative aspects it is still detrimental because it shows more outstanding debt than you actually have. The highest credit scores belong to the people with the least amount of debt yet the most available credit.

Be aware that all reporting is based upon the date of last activity. Therefore it may not be to your advantage to pay off an old debt, especially an old collection account or a charge-off. If you pay if off it will bring all of the old negative information forward on your account and may hurt you more than if you leave it alone. Collection accounts are also notorious for being passed on to other companies and even though they are supposed to make sure that they remove it from your account when they no longer own the account many times that does not happen. Check that the accounts are not duplicates and that they are all valid.

Make sure that you address and dispute all unknown items on your credit report. Many people have other people’s information showing on their report. This frequently happens if you have a common name such as Smith or Jones but it can also happen to anybody if the numbers on their SSN get transposed. Make sure that the credit listings on your report belong only to you and that they are accurate and coincide with your own records.

It is also smart to begin to build new credit by getting a credit card. If you cannot as yet qualify for a regular credit card, you can get a prepaid card. Do not get credit from department stores, furniture stores or the like to establish credit because the credit bureaus look upon that type of credit as a negative and it is detrimental to your score.

It may be beneficial to hire a professional credit repair company to assist you with your credit repair. A good credit repair company will have the expertise to guide you through the credit repair maze quickly and efficiently. Of course, you can always attempt to complete your repairs on your own also but in the interest of efficiency, hiring a professional may be something to consider.

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Most people do not have any idea what to do about charge-offs when they show up on their credit report. A charge-off is an indication that the original creditor has written the loan off as a loss, therefore they are no longer actively trying to collect on the loan. However, it still shows on your credit report and it is not a surprise that most people do not know what to do about a charge-off. Should they pay off their obligation or should they leave it alone?

A creditor will write off the loan as a loss if they are unable to collect within a certain period of time. It is more beneficial for them to write it off as a loss if they do not believe that they will ever be able to collect it. Many times they do refer it to a collection agency however, and this can sometimes lead to duplicate listings on your credit report because the original creditor and the collection agency are both reporting to the credit bureaus even though there is just one account.

A negative credit listing, such as a charge-off is supposed to stay on your credit report for a period of 7 years, however that is 7 years from the date of the last activity on the account. So if you pay off an old charge-off to remove it from your credit report, it only serves to bring the negative credit forward as the 7-year time period starts anew. So it may be more detrimental to you to pay if off than it is to leave it alone since the bad credit will be brought forward. This is especially true when you have good new credit that you have been working on.

No matter what the situation may be, before you ever pay off any type of older debt, such as a charge-off or a collection account you need to make sure that you get an agreement in writing that once the debt is paid off they will delete it from your credit report. This process is referred to as a “Pay for Delete” and it is really the only way to protect yourself from further bad credit being reported on your credit report about that account.

You have the right to dispute any negative credit on your credit report under the Fair Credit Reporting Act or the FCRA. That includes charge-offs, collection accounts, repossessions, tax liens and even foreclosures and bankruptcies. The credit bureaus have a certain period of time after receipt of a letter of dispute to either verify the truthfulness of their negative reporting or delete it completely from your report.

Once you start sending in your dispute letters to repair your credit, it is crucial that you keep meticulous records. Make sure and keep a copy of every letter that you send and also every letter that you receive in return. The credit bureaus will have 30 to 45 days to verify the negative listings and then an additional 5 days to respond back to you. It is your responsibility to follow up with them and make sure that everything is completed in a timely manner. You must also realize that it may take more than one letter to get results so you will need to make sure that you are persistent.

Credit repair can be completed on your own and you do not necessarily need the assistance of anyone else, however it can be a complicated and time-consuming process and you may decide that you would prefer to use the services of a professional. It may very well be more cost-effective to do so when you take into consideration the time and expertise that it takes. Most people already have full-time jobs and full-lives and it may be better to delegate some of the work so that it can be completed in a timely and efficient manner with less interruption to your own life.

It is completely possible to get any type of negative credit listings removed from your credit report, including charge-offs, collection accounts and even bankruptcies and foreclosures. There are some simple and specific steps to take to get started. At the same time you will also need to start rebuilding good credit as you go so that it can overcome the bad credit of the past.

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