Credit Repair: Do it yourself
Credit November 13th, 2007 “We can remove your ailing credit — 100% guaranteed.”
“We can erase bankruptcies, judgments, charge offs and bad loans from your credit report forever!”
“We are a non profit credit repair organization and can provide quick fix to your bad credit”
Do these advertisements sound familiar? Yes, these ads are a common sight nowadays as a significant industry of credit repair has grown at a steady pace. Such credit repair firms either promise to “erase bad credit”, or make sensational promises of providing the consumers a new, clean credit history.
I have often seen people asking “what are the different ways to fix a bad credit”. The answer to this question is pretty simple. The right way to fix credit is to dispute and remove false and inaccurate information that is included in your credit report. Here are some of the do it yourself steps to fix errors in your report –the best part about is it that you don’t have to pay a hefty fees to any credit repair firm for it.
• Send a letter of dispute to the credit reporting agency
Notify the credit reporting agency about the items in your report that you want to dispute (the address will be printed on the report). Mention each item in the credit report you are disputing, state the facts and explain why you dispute it and request an investigation to resolve the issues. Enclose all the paperwork (not originals) to support your position. If you want you can enclose a copy of your credit report with the disputed items circled or highlighted for ease of processing. Ensure that you send all materials via certified mail with a return receipt requested, so that you have the proof that the reporting agency received your letter.
Once the reporting agency receives your dispute letter it will initiate an investigation, usually with in 30 days unless they view your dispute baseless. They also must contact the information provider and forward all the relevant paperwork you had provided about the inaccuracy. The information provider after receiving the data from the reporting agency must reinvestigate and review the data and then report the results back to the consumer reporting company. If the source of information can not prove that the item in question is correct, then it must be removed. When the investigation gets completed, and if there are any changes then the reporting agency must send you a free copy of your report with all the updating done.
• Send a dispute letter to the source of information
Send a similar letter of dispute to the information provider whose reporting statements you dissent with. If the information provider reports the item to a consumer reporting company after receiving your dispute letter then it must also include a notice of your dispute. And if your claim turns out to be correct, the information provider should not report it again.
Credit repair is a long process and takes time. So, don’t expect that your bad credit will change in a fortnight..you have to be patient!!! But I can assure you that it will be worth waiting for.
November 20th, 2007 at 4:07 am
Hi Nelly,
I like the idea of repairing my credit all by myself. It is not too laborious to learn something to do all by yourself. Great post
November 26th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
Hi Nelly,
I read the post and I too believe that the best credit repair has to be done by yourself. Can you please let me know a more about dispute letters .
November 26th, 2007 at 10:41 pm
You can go thru the following site to have a look into some of the sample dispute letters
debtconsolidationcare.com/letters/
hope it was useful
Nelly
December 13th, 2007 at 1:17 am
To me, credit repair is something i’d better try rather than allow others to do. It’s my credit, good or bad and I’ll do that every bit to keep it clean and tidy.