Information You Need To Know About Credit Repair
By Parker Graham
Credit repair is possible because the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) allows the consumer to challenge the information on his or her credit report on the basis of “completeness and accuracy.“
When a dispute is filed with the credit bureaus, they must contact the creditor and confirm that the information in dispute is accurate, verifiable, and not obsolete.
If the credit bureau has not received verification from the creditor within 30 days, then the credit bureau must promptly delete the credit listing.
Bad Debt
It is difficult to get your credit repaired without somehow taking care of your outstanding debts. When you have an outstanding debt, in some cases you may be able to negotiate the deletion of the negative credit as part of the debt payoff.
You do have some negotiating power with the creditors after all they do want their money, so make the most of the little bit of leverage you have and try to negotiate.
Be aware that by paying a bad debt off, that alone will not improve your credit rating much.
By paying an outstanding debt you will change the account status to “paid collection,“ “paid was late,“ or “paid was charged off“ - which will still stand out as very negative credit. And negative credit is allowed to stay on the credit report for a maximum of seven and a half years, except for bankruptcy which may remain on the credit report for ten years.
Keep in mind that it is almost always prudent to seek professional help to settle your debts before any further damage is done to your credit.
100 Word Statements
As a part of the revised Fair Credit Reporting Act, they have included an amendment to allow you to post a 100 word statement to your credit profile allowing you to explain some of your negative credit.
Many credit repair sites will recommend that you prepare a 100 word statement to add to your credit profile. The fact is that most, if not all, creditors will not even see this.
They will simply take your numerical score from your credit report and make their decision from that alone, not even looking any further into your credit. Not to mention your FICO score won‘t even take this 100 word statement into account when calculating your score.
What this 100 word statement does is that it validates your credit problems and makes it a much more difficult task to try and remove these issues in the future.
Therefore, it is best not to file one of these statements with the credit bureaus as it will only serve to make your, or the credit repair specialists, task of repairing your credit much more difficult.
Legal Credit Repair Methods
To better understand what legal credit repair is, it would be helpful to understand a few types of illegal credit repair:
Illegal: Changing your social security number to obtain a clean bill of credit.
If any company should suggest this type of credit repair, report them to the authorities.
Illegal: Disputing every item on your credit report, regardless of nature.
The Fair Credit Reporting Act specifically states that only items that are unverifiable, inaccurate or misleading should be disputed. Items that are clearly yours, and reflect your credit history should not be disputed.
Illegal: Charging for services that have not yet been completed.
This
The week we got our tomato seedlings and herb sprouts in the ground is the week I finally sat down and read Dave Ramsey?s Total Money Makeover. Both things speak to me of the value of being self-sustainable in a nation underwater in debt.