Beware of So-Called Credit Repair Specialists

Many people today are experiencing severe stress due to lack of employment and a general lack of funds in their income, which has led to faltering credit and sleepless nights. Everywhere you look online or on television and radio you will find advertising for credit repair specialists who are ready and willing to help you out of your mess and get you back onto the road of prosperity. You need to be aware of the growing number of scammers out there preying on stress addled people and especially senior citizens. They falsely advertise themselves as credit repair specialists and professionals when they are in reality nothing more than charlatans and con artists. There are some true professional credit repair specialists and you need to know how to hire the right firm. But you may not have to. Thats right, you might just be able to do it yourself and save a bundle.

If you have over ten thousand dollars worth of high interest rate credit card debt you are probably struggling each month to make the minimum payments. Since the minimum payments pay mostly interest, you never seem to be able to reduce the principal amount of your balance no matter how many payments you make. Every once in a while the banks will hit you with a steep fee of some sort. You think that these fees are frivolous and that you never signed up for them, but who ever really reads the fine print? Yes, you did sign up for that hefty annual fee and that start-up fee. And when you are late even a few minutes past cutoff in making your payment, guess what? Thats right, late fee. And dont even think about going over your spending limit because, of course, that is yet another fee.

If you have a lot of this kind of debt then maybe you do need a credit consolidation or credit repair specialist or firm. On the other hand if you only have a few dings on your credit that you want to clean up, then you can definitely do this yourself and save a bunch of money in the process.

Getting your credit score back on the right track takes time. You credit score is not going to go up overnight, but there are some techniques that you can use to raise your score by ten, twenty, or even thirty points or more within two to four weeks. You first need to know what your actual credit scores are and for that you need to go online. Go to www.freecreditreport.com and register with them, but do not sign up for any trial programs. You just want to register your user name and password then once your account is set up you click the button for ordering your 3 bureau credit report. This is called a tri-merge report and gives you your credit scores from all three of the major credit reporting agencies.

If you are not familiar with these agencies they are: Experian, Equifax, and Transunion. Sounds like some kind of high tech law firm. Once you get your credit report back you can send dispute letters to, well, dispute any negative items that appear on there. You need to dispute each item with a letter by snail mail and they have to be separate disputes to each of the three bureaus. 30 days later check your credit again and you should see a marked improvement. If not, keep trying. Remember, this process takes time.