Credit repair doesn't involve secret techniques. Unscrupulous credit repair businesses promote these ideas so that consumers will not only think they cannot repair their credit themselves, thus justifying outrageous fees.
The first step to repairing your credit is to know what is being reported on your credit report. Under federal law, each of the three major credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian, and Transunion are required to funrish you with a free copy of your credit report. Just go to www.annualcreditreport.com to obtain copies. As an aside, there are companies including credit card companies that will offer the same reports which can be obtained for free from the aforementioned website.
High credit balances, past due balances, late payments, lack of credit, and seriously delinquent accounts such as charge-offs or collections will negatively impact your credit score. These may also be referred to as derogatory marks or "derogs." Once the credit reports are acquired and reviewed, it is time to verify that all of the informaton on the reports are correct. If there is a "derog" that is inaccurate, it must be disputed to the credit reporting agency. Be aware that this inaccuracy could be on one or all three of the major credit reports. So the dispute procedure must be followed for each to remove it from each inaccurate credit report.
If you order your credit reports online, you can dispute the inaccuracy online or by mail. Either way, keep careful records of what you are transmitting to the credit reporting agency. By law, the credit reporting agency must investigation the disputed inaccuracy and either "verify" the derogatory mark or remove it completely.
The verification procedure involves the credit reporting agency communicating with the creditor and asking whether the derogatory mark is accurate. If its not, or if the creditor fails to respond within 30 days, law requires that the derogatory mark must be removed and the credit reporting agency is required to provide a new accurate credit report to you free of charge.
This is a lot of great information, I wish that this kind of stuff was taught in school because I am sure that most people do not know and the ons that do have learned the hard way.
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