Undertaking Credit Repair On Your Own (What To Do And What Not To Do)

If you have recently been turned down for a loan, or for a new credit card, you may be in need of Credit Repair. Being denied credit is often the result of a bad credit report
, which can happen in two circumstances. You have either managed your credit poorly, which has reflected in your credit report; or your credit file has some erroneous items, thus negatively impacting your report. In either situation, it is vital that you undertake credit repair as soon as possible.

TO DO:

Here is a strategy to help with your credit repair. You can do this on your own and can thus repair your credit for free.

•Request a copy of your credit report from any one of the 3 credit bureaus. If this is your first request of the year, you will be given the report for free.

•Once you have your report, examine it closely. You have to study all the entries and mark all those which are incorrect and which are damaging your credit worthiness.

•After you have determined the wrong entries, you have to contact the credit reporting agencies and tell them to delete the erroneous entries from your report.

•Even if there are some correct entries in your credit report, but these are negative in nature, you could still get them removed. This would go a long way in ensuring credit repair. There is a certain time limit for which negative entries can stay on your report (usually between 7 and 10 years). If such time limit has passed, you should write to the credit bureaus to delete the negative items from your report.

•Ensure that all your correspondence with the credit companies and agencies is through registered mail. This way, you have proof of your requests and also when exactly you initiated the process of your credit repair. Keeping a record will also help you in case any deleted entry is re-included in your report anytime in the future.

•Within 30 days, some action should have been taken regarding the wrong items on your report. If the credit bureaus determine that the entries were in fact wrong, they will remove it from your report, thus bringing about the credit repair that you were after.

In case the matter is not resolved to your satisfaction, you should continue challenging the items on your report till such time that credit repair has indeed occurred.

NOT TO DO:

People whose credit score is low or who have a bad credit report often try desperate means to repair credit and thus end up hurting their credit even more. Most of the information available on credit score repair and credit report repair tells you what to do to restore good credit. However, we will tell you about some of the things that you should NOT do in order to repair bad credit.

1.File Segregation: Many credit repair companies lure people with the false promises of bad credit repair by telling them that they can create a new credit file for them by issuing them a new identity. This is known as file segregation. However, you need to understand that such a process is not legal and can even put you behind bars if you try to segregate your credit file to repair bad credit. Thus, no matter what any credit repair company tells you - things like you will not be able to get any loans or even a credit card for the next few years, or that you will not be able to get a job etc; under no circumstances should you agree to the process of file segregation to repair bad credit.

2.Deleting accurate information from credit report: Some credit repair agencies make claims to people that they can repair credit by getting accurate information of a negative nature deleted from their credit reports, thus improving their credit rating. However, this simply cannot be done. Only inaccurate information can be removed from a credit report and not accurate data, unless such data is older than 7 to 10 years. Thus, you should not trust anyone who tells you that they can repair bad credit by removing negative items from your credit report.

3.Advance Payments: No credit repair agency is legally allowed to ask for advance payments. They can only charge for services that have already been given and not beforehand. Thus, you should NOT be taken in by any company who wants high advance payments.

Credit Repair Services

With the influx of people who are worrying about their credit scores and their finances in general, it comes as no surprise that there are companies out there who are offering exclusive services to clean up or repair your damaged credit. While it may seem like such a simple solution to your credit woes, be warned - some of these companies are not what they claim to be.

Credit repair services claim to repair bad credit marks on your credit history. What you need to find out before committing to a service is how the company goes about making such repairs. There is a big difference between the items on your credit reports that make up a poor credit score and then there are items on the report that are genuine mistakes. If the company tells you then can remove all bad marks - walk away now. No one can remove information that show poor credit activities. To do so would be illegal.

On the other hand, you have the right to look at your credit report and file a request to remove any misinformation. If the credit reporting agency claims they can repair inaccurate information for you, know this - you too can do the same thing for free. All that is involved in this procedure is analyzing your credit report and noting all mistakes. You then have a right to file a complaint with the credit bureau that provided the report. The credit reporting bureau is then obligated to investigate the information from the original creditor within a reasonable period of time. If the creditor responds that the information is indeed correct, your report will not change. If the credit reporting agency gets no reply from the creditor, the incorrect information will be removed from your credit report.

While you cannot remove poor credit activity from your credit report, you can ask your creditors to work with you to improve the information being reported to the credit reporting agencies. They may not all be cooperative but it is worth a try in order to improve your credit score.

For those people who simply do not want to go through the trouble of repairing their own credit reports, there are reputable companies who can do the repair work for you. Be sure before you commit to any one company, be sure they are a company in good standing with the Better Business Bureau and will work with you to truly help you repair your credit score and not just take your money. A good first red flag - if the Credit Repair agency denies you can do the above-mentioned steps on your own - know that they may not have your best interests at heart as they are not being honest with you. Also be aware and clear of how much it will cost to work with a credit repair company before signing on the dotted line.

Here are some other points that may raise some alert flags:

· Speak to you in terms that seem confusing and "over your head" with no real concern if you understand

· Do not tell you honestly about what your obligations or rights are concerning your credit.

· Tell you that they can repair all bad credit marks on your report.

· Last, but not least, if a Credit Repair company tries to convince you to apply for a new identity using an EIN number for credit purposes. This is very illegal and is not repairing anything.