All posts by JamesEarls

Business

Credit Repair Services – How Am I Going To Benefit?

These services are often a group of lawyers and paralegals that will work to remove negative information from your credit report. Primarily they are going to use the fair credit reporting act as a basis to have the negative information removed.

This piece of legislation requires that the bureaus investigate a consumer’s credit report if they file a dispute. To file a dispute you must write a letter to each bureau in which you identify the item you are challenging.

The bureaus will then investigate, they will contact the lender and asked them to verify the balance, the account, and the dates on the debt. It is very common for lenders to not verify an account when the bureaus contacts them, this is because it cost lenders even more money and often they have no way to get any return investment on verifying your account.

Two Important Things

1. Roughly 80% of all investigations result in the removal of an item from your report, regardless of how accurate or inaccurate the item is. This is because once a lender sells your account to a collection agency they no longer have any legal grounds to contact you or collect on that debt. Therefore when the bureaus contact them they are only going to spend money to verify your debt and instead won’t verify it.

2. Unfortunately getting the bureaus to investigate isn’t as easy as just sending a letter, this is why many people turn to a professional lawyer to ensure that the bureaus follow federal law. However Congress has not helped your cause because they have given the bureau’s power to first decide that a dispute is valid before they will investigate it.

We have a difficult time trying to comprehend why Congress would do this, because it surely isn’t in the consumer’s best interest. The bureaus only spend money when they investigating a dispute and are forced to investigate disputes because of the earlier aforementioned fair credit reporting act.

The bureaus have been fined over and over again by our federal government for not investigating disputes, yet Congress decided to give them the power to decide if it’s valid before they have to investigate? In other words the bureaus are going to avoid investigations at all costs because there is no return profits or even potential for correcting a report to generate any income for the bureaus.

Often your dispute letter will be responded to with a letter that asks you for more information about the item, this is going to happen regardless of the need. This is simply a stall tactic and an attempt by the bureaus to get you to give up and just live with the negative items on your credit file.

You are going to need to stay persistent or higher a credit repair service as they will file the disputes on your behalf and have the legal resources to ensure that the bureaus do investigate. Additionally these lawyers can also help you settle any outstanding debt and ensure that these items will either be removed or can be removed once the debt is settled.

Make sure you fully research each service as many will vary widely in the features, benefits and costs. You should expect to have a lawyer on your side however a paralegal will typically do most of the work. Your costs should not exceed $50 per month with about $100 upfront or retainer payment.

For more about credit report repair services or for more about how to correct credit report visit us you can also call 800-251-3505 for a free credit consultation.

International Trade

The Lexington Law Firm Review

The Lexington Law Firm is a credit repair service. They will file a dispute with the bureaus and try to remove negative marks from your report.

Removing negative items will improve your payment history. If you pay your current bills on time and remove old negative items then your payment history will improve and so will your FICO score. Your payment history is taken into account for almost 40% of your overall score calculation.

How Do They Work?

1. You Need Your Reports – you will need to forward these to Lexington. You also need to tell them what items you feel are questionable and you would like to have disputed.

2. They Will File a Dispute – this is done by writing a letter to each bureau. In the letter it will need to have; your personal information, the items you are challenging, and the reason it is inaccurate. Congress passed the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) this law gives you the right to challenge any item that you feel is inaccurate.

3. Bureaus Will Investigate – the bureaus will contact each lender or debt collector and ask them to verify the account, the dates, and the balance. If the account can not be verified then it must be removed from your report.

4. Check Your Mail Box – you will get notification from the bureaus of their results by mail. They will tell you if the item was removed or updated with accurate information. You need to forward these letters to your service so they are up to date with your progress.

5. Watch The Items Fall Off Your File – sit back and relax and watch your report get cleaned up.

How Much Will It Cost?

We can not provide you with a concrete figure as it will depend on how long you use the service. It also is dependent upon how much work needs to be done to clear your file.

There is a $99 up front fee and then a monthly fee starting at $49 a month. Often clients will use the service for about 8-12 months. At the end of the day you are looking at about $500 to use this service.

They will not guarantee results and anyone that does, you should view very skeptically. Unfortunately everyone has a different set of circumstances and while you can rest assured you have experts working for you with a service, they still can not make any guarantees. However a good idea is to look at their past results, how long they have been in business, and what prior clients have to say about their experience with a service.

I Thought This Was Illegal?

Somehow this myth has been spread through our society and couldn’t be further from the truth. Congress passed the FCRA which gives you the right to dispute items on your report, and this was passed to protect consumers from debt collectors and the bureaus.

It is 100% legal and no one has ever faced any criminal prosecution for filling a dispute. Did you know the experts estimate that 25% of all reports have an error on them? Without the FCRA you would have to just live with these errors, which could be damaging your score.

For a free credit consultation call 1-800-232-2903 or for a further review of Lexington Credit Repair service or for more about Credit Repair Services and how they work visit us.