help with improving my credit score?
I have bad credit and would really like to improve it. I don’t want to get scammed by the “credit repair services” that promise to remove items off my credit report. I really just wanted to get help to fix my bad credit. What are my options?
”
Those services can only dispute items.
They offer no guaranttes whatsoever.
Seems like they just charge for something you can easily do yourself.
There are many good books at the bookstore on Debt / Credit Repair.
They teach you step by step how to negotiate, settle, reduce payments, or even lower your interest rates.
They even teach you how to do the “pay on delete” correctly.
Make an investment on a book today.
These companies don’t do anything different that what is already in these books, and the copanies charge thousands of dollars for their services.
If you are in serious trouble and you are not much of a reader, consider.
National Foundation Consumer Councelling = NFCC.org
They are a government non profit agency – no charge – at most $25/ month.
Many scam companies are making up similar names – so be careful.
Go to the site and make an appointment with a local office.
/
You’re right about most credit repair companies being a scam. If you wanted to go that route, go with one that only charges per deleted account. Most charge an upfront fee (“set-up” fee) and on top of that they may have you pay monthly even if nothing is done to improve your credit.
If you were looking to improve it yourself – you can. Depending on the types of negatives you have in your credit file will depend on how you go about improving it. Sure you can try requesting verification and you may luck out and have a collection agency not verify the account in the required time – which would get it deleted. Far to often just requesting verification will actually have a negative impact on your score. The reason why: When you request verification, the collection agency will begin updating your account info. The reason they do this: To further damage your score in hopes that you’re looking to improve it – if they can further damage it, you may be willing to pay it off to stop the updates. Updated negative info will cause a score drop, and this is usually the case when you simply request verification.
An option you could consider if you have collection accounts is working with them to get it paid and deleted. For example: if you have collections, you can work with the collection agency – offer “pay for delete” agreements and if they accept, the collection agency will delete the negative account from your credit reports once the account is paid as agreed. Depending on how many collection accounts you have & how old they are – getting 1 collection off your report could improve your score from 5 points to 50 points.
If your bad credit is due to late payments or missed payments, you could always try negotiating with the creditor – ask them if they would remove the negative info if you made on time payments for the next 6 months or so. They may not make any deals, but the key thing you should know is they or any source reporting the info – have the absolute right to report info (if it is accurate), change/update info, delete info or not report it at all. There is no harm in trying to work something out – the worse they will say is no and as the missed or late payments age – it will have less and less of a negative impact on your score.
The source I left below further explains different options for you to consider and a “do it yourself” credit repair guide, which is a pretty good explanation on how to do so. Also there are example Pay for Deletes, Cease & Desist and other helpful info along the way of improving your credit.
I went to the community forums at http://www.myFICO.com The entire forums are for the regular “Joe” like us to ask questions & help others.
The site is owned by Fair Isaac, the developer of the FICO scoring system. The moderators are extremely attentive to remove inaccurate information and/or responses to any question you may have. Their sole intent is to educate the consumer on the best way to get and keep the cleanest reports with the highest FICO scores possible.
They do NOT try to sell you anything, but they do offer forum members exclusive discounts on FICO products like score watch, FICO scores and monitoring systems.
If it were not for the group there, I would not have been able to be approved to buy my home or even get my most recent GEM of a credit card…a Nationwide Visa with a great rate, a 10k limit & 0% interest on all automobile related purchases (including gas, parts, oil changes & any mechanical or cosmetic work)
Those folks help you up when you’re down & cheer you when you get baddies removed. Fot the past 3 years they have been like my extended family!
I HIGHLY recommend dropping over there & at least do some reading. They have special sections for mortgage questions, report repair, credit cards, bankruptcy, and a bunch more. Collectively they have done & seen it all. And best of all…they judge NO ONE. You can spill all the bad info to them & all they want is to help you.
They RULE!!
Really the only things you can do is practice good behavior. Getting approved for a loan, credit card, etc and paying on time/early is what will get your score up.
I had a company repair my credit, Justice Credit Solutions. I got alot off. I used one company before and they sent a blanket dispute saying it was “not mine”, but it was and it came back verified and then they didn’t dispute anymore . . .they sucked. Justice Credit did something different where they attacked the tradeline with 13 different disputes on one tradeline until the collection agency didn’t have proof and it became costly to the collection agency that only paid pennies for the debt and they didn’t want to pay for the man power to answer 13 disputes all month, that they just deleted it . . lol. I appreciated their work. They also didn’t charge me until AFTER they were doing doing their work for the month. And i could log into their system and see WHAT they were doing all month. and when i got my score to where i needed it to get a car loan i was able to cancel their service.
Сredit repair workеd fine to fix my credit. They disputed and removed lots of bad items from my credit report. I used this service – credit-report-score.10001mb.com