It’s all the rage right now to try to get your credit score up so that you qualify for lower interest rates on loans. What we are seeing is a growth of businesses that are promoting themselves as experts in the field of credit repair. What is there about these businesses that are so intriguing? Do the principles that they use work? Will my credit really be repaired?
The answers to these questions are not short however, there are some principles that you will need to keep in mind when it comes to credit repair that will help you determine whether or not you should utilize these services.
Some Credit Reports Contain Errors That Can Be Fixed
How do you know if your credit report contains errors? You have to look. You are allowed by law one free credit report every 12 months. You should obtain one of these from the three reporting bureaus so that you can check yours for problems. Your free credit report can be obtained from www.annualcreditreport.com . Any other site is trying to sell you something.
The three reporting bureaus are Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian. Annualcreditreport.com will help you get your free report from each one so that you can see what it contains, and check it for errors.
Credit Report Entries Cannot Be Erased by Questionable Methods
There are unscrupulous companies out there that are advertising services that can clean up your credit report from any bad entries. This is false advertising and is reason to stay away from these companies. The only ‘bad’ entries that can be removed are those that are clear and provable errors. If you have an entry on your credit report that is ‘bad’ but is there because of your own actions that entry cannot be legally removed.
Your Credit Score Will Go Up With Errors Removed
This is a true statement, but beware of those companies that give you an inflated idea of how much it will go up and how soon it can be accomplished. Performing the activities related to cleaning up errors on a credit report can take time because the errors must be factually and legally challenged with documentation to back them up. Going through the process to do this right takes time and patience. Once errors have been corrected and wrong entries removed, it is likely that your credit score will rise. But, how much and how soon are purely speculative assumptions.