DIY Credit Repair

One of my cousins came to see me excited over a meeting she recently had. If you know my cousin, she gets excited over air so I always have to proceed with caution every time she has wide eyes and a high pitched voice and looks like she is about to do a cartwheel. She was excited because she had just met with a credit repair company that promised that they can get all of her negative credit taken off her credit report and can get her score high enough so she could buy a home.

Knowing that my cousin was not the most fiscally responsible person in the world, I suspected most of the negative information on her report was hers. I told her that under most circumstances, no one can remove accurate negative information and asked her how the credit repair agency was going to do this. She then outlined the plan they gave her, which is almost a textbook example of how to know when you should run from a credit repair agency.

They would report the negative debt as fraud, which is ironic because they are committing fraud by doing this. I told her that this is a lie and all a creditor would have to do to disprove the fraud claim is to go into her closet, which looks like an exclusive shopping mall, to know she is responsible for every purchase. She was also told to get an employer identification number from the IRS and to use this number instead of her Social Security number when applying for credit. Any agency that is telling you to lie is lying themselves and is not a place to do business.

Once she realized this, she looked at me and asked me if there are any legitimate credit repair companies. I told her that yes there are legitimate credit repair agencies but there is nothing that they can do for you that, if you aware willing to put in the effort, you can do yourself. For instance, a legitimate credit repair agency will do the following:

They will first review your credit reports from the three main credit reporting agencies. You can get your credit report for free from all three credit reporting agencies by going to annualcreditreport.com. The legitimate credit repair agency will then look for information on your credit report that is inaccurate, incomplete or contains information that should not be reported. You can use Nolo.com’s credit report checklist to look for information that should not be on your credit report.

Once the information is found, the credit repair agency will dispute the information with the credit bureaus to get them removed. Although you can dispute the claims yourself online at each of the major credit reporting agencies, experts recommend sending a detailed letter to the credit bureaus and the creditors you are disputing that details why the information is wrong with the evidence to back up your claim. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, a credit reporting agency has to respond to every dispute it receives within 30 days or the item will be removed from the credit report. Consider contacting your EAP or legal benefit program at your job to see if you are eligible for free legal services to help you clean up your credit.

You don’t need to lie to fix your credit. You don’t even need to hire a legitimate credit repair agency. With a little bit of work, you can clean up your credit report and save your money.

 

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