Credit Loan > Credit Repair

Credit Repair

Whether you are looking to buy a new home, car or just get a credit card, bad credit can make it a bit difficult. Consumers with bad credit should know a few things before paying someone specializing in credit repair services. Most of the credit repair services available can provide as much credit help for consumers as consumers can provide for themselves.

There are some credit repair services available that can help, but consumers should be warned about credit repair services offering credit help but wanting the consumer to pay first. Most likely the company will just take your money and do little to actually help. As already stated, everything that a credit repair company can do for the consumer, they can do for themselves.

If you’re a consumer that believes that there are aspects of misinformation on your credit report, contact the credit reporting agencies and dispute it. This might sound simple and it is-- simply type up a letter, attach a copy of your credit report with the disputed item highlighted and tell them in the letter why you believe the information is inaccurate.

When the credit reporting agency gets the letter they are required to flag and remove the disputed part of the credit report and begin an investigation. The investigation consists of the reporting agency sending a letter to the company that put the entry on the consumer’s report, giving them thirty day to prove whether the information contained in the consumer’s report is true or not. If the company that put the information on the report proves the entry is true, then the entry returns to the consumer’s credit report.

Most consumers don’t know this, but in most cases, the company that put the entry on the credit report is so busy that they don’t have enough staff to respond to the consumers dispute, so in most cases the entry goes away. Sometimes consumers have to repeat this process more than once to get the result they are looking for, so it might take a few months to get the entry off the consumer’s credit report. How is that for credit repair?

Consumers with multiple credit repair entries should realize the each item they dispute requires separate letters and copies of the credit report, so in those cases credit repair services are probably the best option-- especially if the consumer doesn’t feel like licking envelopes all night, just let a credit management company handle it.

So consumers that think that credit repair is difficult or costly should think twice before spending hundreds or sometimes thousands of dollars getting someone else to provide credit help, unless they have lots of thing on their report they want to remove.