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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 is to protect the consumer from fraudulent companies that charge
for services that never get completed (charging to "repair your
credit", then hitting the road...)
So, what exactly is Legal Credit
Repair?
Legal Credit Repair consists of
removing the negative items on a credit
report. There are a few different methods of going about this, the most
common and effective are: "Goodwill" Negotiation Negotiating
directly with
creditors and
asking them to "please" remove negative items from your credit reports
is a viable method of credit repair for mild late-pay accounts. There
are no laws that require that negative items stay on your reports for
any amount of time, and creditors have the ability to simply remove
these items if they see that it could somehow work to their benefit,
even if that simply means a pleased customer. Credit Disputation
The Fair Credit Reporting Act
gives you the
right to contact credit bureaus directly and dispute items on your
credit reports. Just as in a court of law, you have the right to plead
"not guilty" to negative information on your credit reports, and leave
the burden of proof to the credit bureaus. You can dispute any and all
items on your credit reports that you feel classify as inaccurate,
unverifiable, or misleading. If the bureaus can not verify that the
information on your reports is indeed correct, then those items must be
deleted.
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