How Some Credit Repair Companies Ruin Your Credibility

Let it be known right at the outset that not all Credit Repair companies are disreputable. There are many companies and credit repair professionals who genuinely help you repair your credit. When trying to select a company to help you in Credit Repairs, you need to do a lot of research before settling on one. Some will approach you to help "fix" your credit, and these should be avoided.

Credit Repair Scams

The best way is to repair your credit yourself. However, if you need help, you need to be careful in selecting the type and mode of help. Some Credit Repair companies do not help at all. Rather, they produce opposite results. Some will promise to get you out of debt, but they cannot improve or repair your credit. You need to send them a check every month from which they are to pay your creditors. They, in fact, make late payments and your account is rated R2 - which mean that payments were made after 30 days. This further lowers your credit score!

Certain persons, posing as ‘Debt Negotiators’ further ruin your credit rating by suggesting not paying your credit card bills. They, of course, charge you upfront fees, maintenance fees, and monthly fees, etc. After months of non-payment, they negotiate with the creditors to settle for a lesser amount. This ruins your credibility, by your account being tagged R4 or R5 - payments delayed beyond 90 days, and beyond 120 days. Further, the money you considered as having saved, by paying a lesser amount, is actually considered ‘income’ by the IRS and you pay income tax on that!

Some Credit Repair companies, promising to remove listed information in your credit reports, will write on your behalf to the credit bureaus, stating the information as false. The credit bureaus will remove the said information while conducting investigations. In the meanwhile you receive a clean Credit Report, which gives you a false sense of having a good credit. After investigations, the negative information reappears in your report.

Some agencies do perform a reputable job and help you remove incorrect items, such as children’s items on parents’ reports, double items, paid-off items that still show on your report, and items that should rightly have been removed after a bankruptcy. Such reputable Credit Repair companies do help people who are not comfortable dealing with such things.

Keep this in mind: Only the incorrect items, if proven to be false, can be removed from your credit reports. If the negative items are correct, they JUST cannot be removed, regardless of what anyone tells you!

More credit repair articles here: Finance and Credit Repair