Consumer Credit Repair Services |
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Without good credit you can miss out on so
many things in life and you will find it difficult to qualify for a home
mortgage or a car loan. To restore a damaged credit rating, people seek
credit repair services, which promise to fix your credit and obliterate negative items from your credit report for a fee ranging up to $500. There is an abundance of credit repair services willing to help you to repair your bad credit. There are many credit repair services that entice gullible people who are in dire financial straits with promises to clear bad credit ratings, regardless of their legitimacy. These agencies cannot provide these services and are only after your money. You should not be fooled by the alluring way these agencies market credit repair services. Many of these so-called credit repair services, clinics, seminars, books, do it yourself kits and companies that claim to erase bad credit, remove negative items or fix credit have been investigated. They may even claim that they are credit consultants or credit educators. Under the Federal Fair Credit Reporting Act, you have the right to have inaccurate information on your credit report corrected by the credit reporting agency and for free of charge. A legitimate credit repair services company merely writes to a credit bureau asking them to correct or remove inaccurate or false items on your credit report. You can do the same for free. It is illegal for credit repair services to take money from customers before providing the contracted service. A disreputable credit repair services firm may simply take the fee and do nothing or try to look effective by exploiting some procedures. If you have a negative mark on your credit report for any reason, such as the repossession of your car several years ago, this negative mark will still appear on your credit report. When the credit repair services firm writes to the credit bureau asking to erase the repossession, the bureau will contact the person or company that repossessed the car for confirmation. If there is any delay in the response of the person or company, the negative item may temporarily disappear from the credit report. The credit repair services firm will take advantage of this situation and will make it appear as if they have been successful in getting the job done and collect their fees. However, as soon as the confirmation from the repossessor reaches the credit bureau, the negative mark will reappear on the credit report. The credit reporting bureaus are now getting wise to these scams and are using new procedures to re-verify disputed information such as Automated Verification. This will make the thirty-day time limit irrelevant. With modern techniques and equipment it is possible that very shortly a credit-reporting agency will be able to verify information in less than 30 minutes! You can guess the future of credit repair services business! To gain the confidence of the customers, many of these credit repair services firms offer a money back guarantee. The problem is that there is no guarantee as to how long they will be in business. These firms stipulate that they may need anywhere from 60 days to 6 months, or more, to achieve their promised results. That is time enough to gather clients, and either close down or leave town. Moreover, their promise needs to be understood properly. If they have promised to improve your credit, it could mean making one simple correction. If they remove one out of your five negative accounts, they would have fulfilled their promise and you would still be left with bad credit. By reporting unpaid balances by unsatisfied customers as uncollectible accounts, these credit repair services firms can actually cause additional problems. If you are considering using credit repair services, make sure the business you choose is registered with the Department of Financial Institutions. |
