Repair Your Credit

To improve your credit score is to give yourself a new lease on some of the most important aspects of living. We all need good credit in order to obtain desirable housing, automobiles and any of the other things in life that we wish for. If you are like millions and millions of Americans, you have a few issues on your credit report that may need dealing with in order to improve your credit score to where you need it to be. Here are some tips for you to follow in order to do that:

Tip 1: It is highly advisable to do a little research and get to know your rights. You are protected by laws concerning your credit. You need to become familiar with them in order to improve your credit score. There are regulations that dictate everything from the reasons that you can be rejected for credit to how collection agencies are entitled to pursue payments from you. Unless you are aware of these laws and regulations, you are bound to be stuck in land of credit-based confusion.

Tip 2: Get free copies of your credit report from each of the three major credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion). Each bureau must provide you a free copy once every year at your request. Be smart and stagger your request every 4 months - one from each. This way, you can stay on top of changes and monitor the progress of your attempts to improve your credit score.

Tip 3: Go over these credit reports with a very fine toothed comb and file a dispute for any and every negative item on them. You see, any disputed item must be investigated by the reporting agency and either verified by the creditor within 30 to 45 days or removed from your report. Many times, the creditors will not verify the information for any number of reasons. That's great news for you! The negative items must be removed by law if they are not verified in reasonable time.

Tip 4: Send every dispute form via certified mail (it only costs a few bucks) and request a reception receipt. Keep your records meticulously and always get everything in writing. You want dates. You want times. You want names. You want to cause delays and be a big pain - as big as possible. You want for just one person in the chain of verification to mess up or get lazy. You want the negative items on your credit report stricken so that you can improve your credit score!

Tip 5: Wait for 30 - 45 days and then get another copy of your report - even if you have to pay for it this time. Review it thoroughly and inquire as to why any unverified disputed item that has had sufficient time has not been removed from your credit report. And then dispute them again. Repeat this process and you will be pleasantly rewarded with an improved credit score rapidly!

To improve your credit score is not a difficult task. It is as easy as being intentionally attentive and thorough. Get the reports. File the dispute forms. Wait and repeat. Your credit score will improve and you will be a happier person because of it!

There are techniques of legal credit repair that you can use to raise your credit report score. In the US, there aren't very many things that you can do without it having something to do with your credit score. Even to obtain suitable housing and transportation, you need to be in good standing with the credit reporting agencies. If you are one of the millions of Americans that has bad or bruised credit, you can engage in the following methods of legal credit repair to get back where you need to be.

Legal Credit Repair Technique 1: Get a free copy of your credit report from any of the three major credit reporting agencies and dispute any negative item that you find on it. Send the letters to the agency via certified mail and always keep good records. At that point, it becomes the responsibility of the agency to verify the negative item with the creditor that placed it there or remove it from your report. This has to be completed in a reasonable time frame - between 30 and 45 days normally. If for any reason the item is not verified in that time frame, it must be stricken from your credit report. The statistics show that roughly 40% of items will not be verified and therefore removed!

Legal Credit Repair Technique 2: Pay off or at least pay down your credit cards. Your credit score is primarily based on two aspects. The first is the timeliness with which you make your payments due. The second is how much of the credit that has been extended to you is actually being used. When you keep your charges on your credit cards at about 30% of the available limit, it shows restraint and responsibility. This is a great way to increase your credit score.

Legal Credit Repair Technique 3: Use some of your older credit cards that you haven't used in a while. The older that an account is and the longer that it is kept in good standing, the better it makes your credit report score. Use those old cards once in a while to keep them fresh and reporting quality information to the credit bureaus. There sitting there in your wallet anyway - give them a little usage and then pay off the full monthly balances to legally repair your credit score.

You have to use what you've got to get what you need. Legal credit repair is your right and you should definitely take advantage of it!

To remove a negative credit rating from your credit report, it must first be inaccurate or unverifiable. How often do consumers have inaccurate information on their credit reports? How often are creditors not able to verify the information that they place on your credit reports? You may be surprised.

A study released by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group in June 2004 found that 79% of the consumer credit reports surveyed contained some kind of error or mistake. Even worse, more than 25% of credit reports have errors serious enough to result in the denial of credit or increase rates. Credit bureau’s errors can cost you literally thousands of dollars.

You may even be more surprised to learn that credit bureaus are private companies whose sole purpose is to collect your information to sell it to pretty much anyone who will pay for it...including yourself. You are allowed one free report per year, but if you want to know your scores or want other reports, you must pay for that information.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act allows consumers to dispute any account that they believe may be inaccurate. The burden of proof is on the creditor and the credit bureaus to prove that the information is accurate. Many of times, they have tossed your records, they are incomplete or inaccurate. Once you send the credit bureaus a dispute letter, they have approximately 30 days to verify that all the information they are reporting is 100% accurate. If not, they must update it or remove the account from your report. If they no longer have your file, they can’t update it, so they must remove it. That is how consumers remove negative credit ratings from their reports.

There are many other ways to do it, like sending debt validation letters to debt collectors or pay for delete letters to creditors, but your best shot and first try should be with a dispute letter. Many times credit bureaus don’t even investigate accounts; they just check records on their e-Oscar system. Unfortunately, they don’t care too much whether your reports are accurate or not. They don’t spend much time reading your dispute, it is all automated. It’s just not profitable, so you may want to keep disputing until they do. Just remember to wait for 30 days, even if you get the results back faster.

Learn how to remove bad credit from your credit reports at the credit repair authority site!

Don’t have time? Let the professionals at Lexington Law Firm do the work for you!

As a credit repair specialist, I frequently get asked these questions about cleaning up your credit report. It's important to know the answers to these questions before you start repairing your credit.

Even if I get a negative item removed from my credit report, it will come back – won’t it?

It’s actually quite uncommon to get an item removed from your credit report only to have it come back. The credit bureaus will sometimes temporarily delete a negative listing if they haven't heard from the credit grantor after the 30 day time frame. If the creditor reports it later, the credit bureau will sometimes reinsert the negative listing back on the credit report. This is called a "soft delete."

Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), the credit bureaus must follow strict guidelines to notify you if they decide to re-report an entry on your credit report, which they hardly ever do. The new FCRA guidelines have reduced the frequency of the negative items being re-reported on your credit report. The guidelines have also increased the risk of lawsuit for the credit bureaus when they violate them.

Bankruptcies and foreclosures are impossible to remove from my credit report, right?

Wrong. Any type of listing on your credit report can be removed, even public records such as bankruptcies and foreclosures. Nothing is set in stone. Tax liens, judgments and repossessions also get removed from consumers credit reports on a daily basis! All negative information that is incorrect, erroneous or even questionable should be disputed.

Public records and unpaid debts can be more difficult to work with; that much is true, but they can be removed if you know what you’re doing. Having this kind of negative information is crucial to your credit scores and your ability to obtain loans at low interest rates.

Having your credit repaired correctly is imperative and that’s why I highly suggest spending a good deal of time learning about credit repair so that you don’t mess it up. I don’t say this to scare you into signing up with a credit repair service or buying a credit repair e-book…I say this because your financial future depends on it.

I’ve seen too many people try to fix their credit on their own first. After they’ve had little to no success, THEN they contact a credit repair service. But, at that time it’s usually too late – the damage has been done. You basically have one shot to get this right. It’s not something that you should try go skim on.

Hire a good credit repair service or put in your time learning about credit repair. Remember, your financial future depends on it.

It seems like more and more credit restoration services are popping up by the minute. You can spot the advertisements for them online, on television and on the radio almost everyday. While I believe the awareness of credit repair and the help available to consumers is a good thing, it can also be very confusing on who to turn to.

When choosing a credit restoration service, one should always research the company’s reputation. Many of the new services that are popping up mean well, but they are not as advanced as some of the credit restoration services that have been around for awhile. I would recommend sticking with a service that has been around for at least a couple years. The more you can find out about them, the better.

Do-it-yourself credit repair is another wise way to mend your credit history and can be a little less expensive. I say "can be" because if you are able to get the same results as a credit restoration service, you are obviously going to save yourself some money. However, if you are not able to get the same or better results as a credit repair service, it may end up costing you hundreds and even thousands of dollars in the long run. I’m not saying that to scare you, but you should take caution when trying to attempt repairing your credit on your own.

Most websites are eager to tell you that credit restoration should be done individually by the consumer. I agree that it should be as well, but encouraging consumers to just jump right in to it without warning them of the horrible consequences that could happen is just very bad advice. The way I look at it is this: Either way you are going to spend time and/or money if you have bad credit, either by paying higher interest rates, spending the time to learn credit repair, or paying for a credit repair service to fix it for you. It’s your choice, but let it be known that sometimes when you try to skimp on things this important it can end up biting you in the end.

How to Remove a Judgment from Your Credit Report

Being sued by a debt collector can be very intimidating. If you are being sued, never let a default judgment be entered. You have nothing to lose by disputing the validity of the judgment or even settling it out of court to avoid that nasty record landing on your credit reports.

The statute of limitations (SOL) on judgments is very long; usually 12 to 20 years. More and more collection agencies are starting to seek litigation simply for the fact that judgments are renewable. Once they get a judgment, it may be renewed if the creditor files a new suit seeking to renew the judgment prior to the expiration of the original judgment) therefore, technically, a judgment could follow you around for life.

Even if you pay a judgment you will be stuck with a 'satisfied judgment" for 7 years from date satisfied not filed! This can be a hopeless situation so avoid being sued at all costs!

However, if you already have a judgments reporting on your credit report, there are ways to have them removed. There are many strategies and options one could use to remove a judgment from their credit report. You have more rights and are protected by more federal and states laws than I could ever write about in one article. The most common is disputing it with the credit bureaus. Another way is simple to negotiate with the creditor. Many people use “pay for delete” letters when negotiating. It’s always important to get the agreement between you and the creditor in writing as once you have paid; they have no other motivation to remove it from your credit report.

Learn more about removing judgments and other negative listings from your credit reports at the credit repair authority site!

"Charge off" is an accounting term that creditors use when they assume after a period of delinquency that they are not able to collect on a debt that is owed to them. Creditors write that debt off as a loss against their income taxes. Just because a debt is charged off (or written off) does not mean the debt is forgiven. The money is still owed. The creditor will usually sell or assign the debt to a collection agency or a lawyer to effect collection.

Some companies continue to charge interest, but most don't. If they do decide to keep charging interest, they have to continue to report it as income. Most companies would rather just write it off and be done with it.

Having charge offs on your credit report usually results in the consumer being denied credit by other lenders. Even worse, it can also affect the interest rate that other lenders charge on current debts even if those lenders were not impacted by the charge off themselves.

If you find yourself late on your payments, you should always try to contact the lender and let them know you are having problems meeting your financial obligations. Ignoring the situation and letting it get to charge off status always makes it worse. You can usually avoid your account being charged off by at least letting them know you intend to pay and by at least making small payments as often as you can.

If you already have charge offs on your credit report, it is possible to have them removed. You can try to contact the original creditor and arrange a payment plan in exchange for them removing the charge off once it is paid. It doesn’t hurt to ask them how it can be resolved or removed. You can also dispute it with the credit bureaus.

It’s much easier to get a paid charge off removed from your credit report than it is an unpaid charge off. When you dispute the charge off with the credit bureaus, they have 30 days to verify the account with the creditor. If the account is paid, many times the creditor will just ignore the verification request. They really only report charge off so that they can damage your credit hoping that it will turn make you want to pay them off. It’s highly unlikely that they would ever ignore a dispute if you still owe them money.

Learn more about removing charge offs from your credit report at the credit repair authority site.

NCO Financial seems to be one of the largest collection agencies in the world. It’s definitely one of the most searched for terms on the internet as far as debt collectors go. Many consumers want to know how to remove NCO Financial from their credit reports, so I have decided to write an article on the subject.

Collection accounts like NCO Financial are removed from credit reports by the thousands everyday. You may have seen or heard ads on television or on the radio about services offering to remove bad credit from your credit reports and wonder if they are legitimate or not. I bet you’d be surprised to know that most of them are.

If you have searched the internet for collection agencies like NCO Financial Services, you will see that they have plenty of complaints about them. You will see that the tactics they use to collect debts are not always so honest and their employees have very little integrity. You will also find that having a collection account reporting on your credit report can hurt your credit scores pretty bad and prevent you from obtaining the loans you need to live a decent life.

There are a few ways you can remove collections from your credit report. The most popular and probably the most effective way is to dispute the account with the credit bureaus. By law you are permitted to dispute any item on your credit report that is “questionable”. If you are not sure that the details of an account are being reported correctly or if you are completely unfamiliar with the account at all, then you can dispute it with the credit bureaus.

Writing debt validation and pay for delete letters are a couple other techniques used by credit repair services and consumers trying to repair their credit. While they are not as popular, these techniques and other credit repair techniques are very effective in getting those nasty collection accounts removed from your credit report.

In today’s world, it's crucial that you understand how your credit reports and credit scores affect your financial situation. Credit scores determine whether you can obtain credit and what you pay for credit cards, auto loans, mortgages and other kinds of credit. They can also be used in deciding whether you get accepted into an apartment community and whether you get a job.

So, where do you start if you have low credit scores? How can you repair your credit score? First, you need to start by grabbing a copy of all 3 of your credit reports. You need to know exactly what is being reported about you and exactly what your scores are. After you get your reports, you need to find out which items are lowering your scores.

It’s fairly easy to see which items are damaging your reports. Most reports are divided into sections which make it fairly easy to tell which accounts are considered negative, but not all reports are. So, it’s important to go through and highlight all of the account hurting your scores. Once you have this information listed, you can start to make a plan on how to eliminate or improve these accounts.

Some accounts won’t be able to be improved. They will need to be removed. But, other items, like accounts with a late payment history can be updated to make the account positive. You can contact the lenders directly to see what it will take to get them repaired. If the creditors are not willing to work with you (unfortunately most of them aren’t) then you will have to dispute the accounts directly with the credit bureaus.

Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, you have the right to dispute any information on your credit report. This is simply done by writing a dispute letter to the credit reporting agencies. Once they have received your letter, they’re required to verify the information with the information provider. They have 30 days to do so. If the information cannot be verified, it must be deleted.

After you've cleaned up your credit report, the next step is to get positive information reporting. Acquiring new positive accounts is just as important as deleting negative accounts. One of the best ways to do that is by getting a secured credit card or an unsecured card from a local credit union. The interest rates are usually pretty high on secured cards and the credit limits pretty low, but that’s ok because you are strictly using these cards to build credit. Keep your balances at 30% of your credit limits or below.

Get more free credit repair tips at AAACreditGuide.com.

The best way to go about finding credit repair help is to know exactly what is hurting your credit scores. There are many factors that can cause your scores to be low. You need to analyze your exact situation. Once you are able to identify the exact problem, you can begin doing research to come up with a solution.

There are many organizations offering help to consumers such as credit repair services, credit counseling services, debt consolidation, etc. But, which one, if any, is right for you? Once again, that all depends on your unique situation. Some financial services out there such as credit counseling, may help you reduce your debt, but at the same time hurt your credit.

Utilizing over 30% of your available credit can be a big factor in low scores. For some people, all they need to do to fix their credit is pay down some debt. The best way to go about paying off debt is setting up a budget and living below your means and maybe even finding a second job. Try to avoid playing high interest fees late payment fees on your loans. Transferring higher interest rate cards to lower interest rate cards can help you pay them down faster as well.

If you have negative items reporting on your credit reports, your best option may be credit report repair. Credit report repair consists of disputing negative accounts with the credit bureaus in hopes of getting them removed. After sending the credit bureau a dispute letter, they have 30 days to conduct an investigation and contact your creditors to verify the information they are reporting is valid. You can also dispute public records such as judgments, bankruptcies, foreclosures, tax liens and repossessions.

After writing a dispute letter to the credit bureaus, it’s also wise to send a debt validation letter to the creditors of any debt that you owe. The request must be done in writing and the creditors have also have 30 days to reply. If the creditors fail to reply or can not supply sufficient proof of your debt, they are required by law to delete the account in question from your credit history.

If they are able to properly validate the debt and the credit bureaus don’t remove it from your reports, the only options you may have left are to negotiate with the creditors. Try to get them to delete the account from your report in exchange for paying off the account. It’s always smart to know where you stand before applying for a loan. If you apply for a loan knowing that your chances are slim of getting it, you’re foolish wasting an inquiry which will hurt your scores even more. Sign up for an online credit monitoring service. Stay on top of your credit report and always know what is being reported about you.

Chane Steiner is a credit repair expert and founder of AAACreditGuide.com, the credit repair help site. His site has helped many people repair their credit and get back on their feet. Chane has reviewed and recommends the following credit repair services.