When , it’s possible to go it alone, searching through your reports line by line for incorrect information and then filing disputes on your own. However, doing the work on your own can be a lot of work. You also may not have as much success making disputes yourself, which means negative information may remain and continue impacting your score.
It can be far less of a headache to hire a credit repair company to do all the legwork for you.
A legitimate company can help you remove negative items from your report, which may improve your score, making it easier to get car loans, credit cards, or insurance.
Here we go into more detail about how credit repair companies work.
What is The Process?
When a company begins working for you, they immediately pull your credit report from all three credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion). A repair specialist will review your report with you to see if they’d be able to help you. If you have negative information that could be contributing to a bad credit score, then you’re a good candidate for repair.
This can take a few days to complete, as they look for things like mistakes in your payment history, duplicate accounts, and expired negative items. If they identify errors on any of your reports, they’ll collect any documentation that you have, which will support your dispute.
Once they have the documentation, they send it to the three bureaus and work with them to determine if the item or items should be removed.
Each credit reporting agency has its own “data furnishers.” That’s what industry experts call banks, credit unions, savings and loan institutions, mortgage lenders, and credit card issuers. Not all furnishers report to all three bureaus.
If the company does not review all three reports, errors could be missed. To be clear, there’s nothing that credit repair companies do that you can’t do on your own. But, hiring a professional repair service often increases your chances of success.
Why Does Using a Credit Repair Service Work Better Than Doing It Yourself?
Their experience makes them more effective when they’re disputing negative information on your behalf. These professionals also apply provisions within federal consumer protection laws to help you improve your credit history.
The best companies will help you:
- Understand and evaluate your credit reports
- Know how your credit scores are determined
- Identify strategies that will continually boost your credit standing
But let’s make one thing clear: credit repair may or may not improve a bad score.
So, if negative items are correct, you’ll need to pay it rather than repair it.
Are Errors On Your Credit Report Common?
You hire these credit repair companies with the idea that they will delete any mistakes on your credit report. And unfortunately, such mistakes can be numerous.
Consumers should check their credit reports regularly. If they don’t, they are potentially putting their pocketbooks at risk.
One in four consumers have errors that could negatively impact their credit score.
How Can You Tell if a Business Is Legitimate or Some Front for a Scam Artist?
There are certain things you should be looking for when investigating credit repair companies and scammers.
Legitimate companies won’t do the following five things:
- Ask for payment upfront before they start any work or charge you for the initial consultation
- Insist that you never contact the bureaus directly yourself
- Advise you to dispute information that’s accurate in your report
- Tell you to provide phony information on your applications for credit or a loan
- Forget to review your legal rights when they explain their services
If you recognize these red flags, or if the company promises that it can increase your credit score by 100 points or more, it’s probably a scam.
The Better Business Bureau (BBB) does not accredit any credit repair company, given the high number of fraud cases in the industry. They still provide ratings and often include warnings of government actions, so you can still check how these companies rate, but you won’t find a repair service that’s BBB-accredited.
Offers that sound too good are usually trouble. Are you ready to work with a great credit repair company to get your score looking much better? Contact the professionals at A+ Credit Repair today.
