professtional credit repair companies?
Public Comments
- so what about professional credit repair companies?????!!!
- Ripoff. Even if some of them are not outright fraud, there is nothing they can do that you cannot do yourself for free.
- If you really want to repair your credit as badly as you say you do, then the first step is to avoid credit repair services. They don't do anything anymore special than you can do on your own. The first thing that you need to know that knowledge is power. In order to fix your credit, you should know how your credit is scored and how it affects you 1. Payment history- 35% 2. Total debt owed to avialable credit ratio-30% 3. Length of time establishing credit-15% 4. Types of credit established-10% 5. Inquiries and New accounts-10% With that said, there's 2 things when it comes to bad debts and collection items that you should be aware of, the FCRA and statute of limitations. These are 2 diffferent things. The FCRA(Fair Credit Reporting Act) is the timeframe that negative items can remain on your report which is 7½ years from the date it first went deliquent. For example if a debt first became delinquent July 10, 2000 the legal limit that the debt can be reported would be January 10, 2008. Also, there is a seperate statute of limitations that varies by state on how long a debt can be legally enforced. This is different from the FCRA, because depending on which state you live in the statute may or may not expire before the FCRA. here's a link for that http://www.creditinfocenter.com/rebuild/statuteLimitations.shtml Another important thing to know is that negative items that are less than 2 years old are hurting your score the most. It's possible that you can settle much older debts for far less in exchange for getting them removed from your report altogether. This is called a "pay to delete". I posted several links explaining this in detail http://www.creditinfocenter.com/debt/settle_debts.shtml http://www.creditinfocenter.com/debt/neg_rating_after_settle.shtml http://www.creditinfocenter.com/debt/CanCreditorSue4SettlementDifferences.shtml http://www.creditinfocenter.com/debt/ActualDebtSuccesses.shtml http://www.creditinfocenter.com/debt/debt-negotiation.php There's sites like the one I posted along with a few more than can help you repair your credit cheaper and easier than you would if you paid out of the pocket.
- There is a specific law, the Credit Repair Organizations Act(CROA) that they're supposed to follow. The problem is most of them don't follow the law. They make outrageous claims about what they can remove and charge you up front for their services, both violations of the CROA law. They don't do anything that you as a consumer can't do yourself. They just have a system that automates the disputes. Also, a good resource is... http://www.safelinked.info/jump.php?link=debt Take care.
* Some answers may have been provided by Yahoo! Answers.