Have you been trying to get your feet back on solid ground after a bankruptcy or other financial problem but finding the prospect tiring and frustrating? Get ready for the Calvary, coming in to offer backup support. Instead of being tempted to fall into claims such as “remove negative credit permanently”, “make your bad credit extinct”, or “for $500 – repair your credit”, we urge you to avoid a credit report repair company and go through the process yourself.
Cleaning up your credit is actually quite easy. It costs around $50, takes about three hours of your time, a little patience, and then you can reap the benefits. Because the numbers associated with the so-called, “credit report repair company” have grown to such huge proportions, new laws have been created to try to protect consumers from their greedy claws. The truth is these companies charge you a fortune to do what you can do on your own for just $50 and a few hours of your time. However, these companies will make the process sound long and complicated, which is untrue.
With one credit report repair company after another popping up around the country, new laws have been passed. One of the most powerful is the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which went into affect in the late 1990s. This law protects people who have been denied credit, regulating the reporting of information by the credit bureaus, while protecting you against the circulation of obsolete or incorrect information. This law fights the credit bureaus and so-called credit report repair company, giving you the rights to the following:
· You can obtain a free copy of your credit report within 30 days of being denied credit
· The credit bureau is allowed to report only accurate information for seven to ten years. However, if at any time you believe the information being reported is incorrect, you can challenge the credit bureau in writing, asking for a full investigation and verification of the disputes. With that, the credit bureau has 30 days to respond and 60 days to investigate.
Keep in mind that while a fraudulent credit report repair company will charge you $500 or more and do nothing, a legitimate company of this same nature would generally charge you less than $20 while working to fix the discrepancies on your credit report. The problem is that finding a legitimate company is difficult since there are so few. The fraudulent credit report repair company will not just take your money but also do more damage than good.
For example, some of these companies will go so far as to ask you to create a new credit reported through a system known as file segregation. To accomplish this, you would have to obtain an Employer Identification Number, which is actually meant for businesses not personal use. This number is then provided to the Internal Revenue Service so you have a brand new identity and therefore, a clean credit report. The problem is that this could easily be deemed by the Internal Revenue Service as a federal crime. In other words, you pay a fortune for assistance and then because you make a misleading or false statement, put yourself in a position of a felony. You can be sure the company could care less what happens to you, as long as they got your money.
Another common scam used by the so-called credit report repair company is to establish yourself as a not-for-profit organization, even if you are not. With this, you are again stepping over the line of what is legal and ethical. Your best bet is to spend the minimal fee to order a copy of your current credit report from the three, national credit bureaus, go through to identify discrepancies, and file disputes on your own. You will save money but also get far better results.
