Four Tips for Receiving the Best Credit Repair
Like millions of Americans do each year, you may be shopping around for some credit repair options. Having a few dings on your credit can make it difficult to buy a house, car or obtain a credit card, so it is no wonder that people with less than perfect credit would seek a solution. Below are four tips for receiving the best credit repair.
1.Don’t Believe the Marketing Materials
If you do a quick internet search for credit repair, you are likely to find several listings from companies that make promises to teach you how to remove negative items from your credit history. Do not believe a word of it.
If it were truly possible to have such items removed then everyone would have excellent credit and, truly, there would be no purpose to the credit bureaus.
The truth is that all of those promises are aimed to do nothing more than convince you to sign up for the program and pay the fee. Sadly, once that happens, you will quickly learn that all of the promises that sounded too good to be true were exactly that.
To receive the best credit repair, you are going to have to ignore all of the marketing materials. Do not allow these promises to sway your decision. You will end up disappointed every time.
2.Be Ethical
Another dilemma that faces many seeking credit repair is the fact that many credit repair agencies encourage you to lie in order to get negative items taken off of your report. They teach you to claim that an account is not yours, even if you know that it does, in fact, belong to you.
The thinking is that if you challenge all of your accounts, that perhaps at least one creditor will fail to respond and, therefore, the item will be dropped from your credit report.
For obvious reasons, this is highly unethical. If you are seeking to receive the best credit repair, this should not including lying and being deceitful in order to get your way.
Instead, refuse to do anything unethical. Even though you might have to wait a bit longer for the negative items on your credit report to come off, at least you will know that you did it the right way.
3.Do it Alone
One thing that the marketing materials of credit repair agencies will not tell you is that you can probably do a better job of credit repair on your own. Keep in mind that negative items that are correct cannot be removed by any third party agency.
In some cases, however, the creditor will agree to remove some or all of the negative items. This is usually done as part of a settlement and is a courtesy from the creditor. No creditor is under any obligation to remove correct negative items from your credit report, even after you have paid the account in full.
If you have some late payments on credit card accounts, call the card issuer. Ask if they would be willing to remove any of the negative items that they reported in exchange for full payment on the account.
Not all credit card companies will be willing to do that, but you have a better chance of getting it done by speaking to them directly rather than trying to work through some third party.
4.What Are You Paying For?
Many credit repair agencies charge a high fee in order to give you access to their “secrets” that will allow you to transform your tarnished credit report into a glowing one. These secrets are not worth the paper that they are printed on. Do not waste your money.
Again, there is no way for a third party to remove any negative items from your credit report. Even if there are mistakes on your report, you do not need to pay a credit repair agency to have them removed.
Instead, simply file a complaint with the credit bureau on which the false item appears. They will investigate and, if it was indeed a mistake, the negative item will be removed at no cost.
While it would be great if there were some quick fix for a low credit score, the fact is that the only real credit repair comes over time by making on time payments and keeping your credit card balances well below their limits.
The good news is that you will probably be surprised at how quickly your credit score will start to climb once you begin to properly manage your accounts. Start today and before you know it, you’ll be on your way to the credit score that you want.
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