Really Free Credit Repair

Really Free Credit Repair

There are a lot of places which advertise that they will fix your credit reports for a fee, they promise the world and seldom deliver anything that you couldn’t do for yourself for free. This article is going to provide enough to get you started reviewing  your credit reports for free and give you some instruction on what it all means and what to do if it is inaccurate.

There are three credit agencies in the US. TransUnion, Experian, Equifax and they are required to give you a free credit report once a year. If you search on the web for the free credit report you will find many links which turn out to be third parties which offer different services and eventually charge you for some service or another. This is so bad that the Federal Trade Commision maintains on their site a link to the real free credit report service mandated by Congress. Rather than give you the direct link I will provide the Federal Trade Service link below to get you started.

Before you click on that link a few warnings, they have security questions about your credit history. They bluff a lot. If they say they have on record that you obtained a house loan in the year 2000 and ask how much it was for, don’t panic if you didn’t, there will be an answer of “none of the above” or something like it. Of course if you really did you need to look up the correct answer.

Click the FTC link below and it will direct you the credit reports from the three agencies. Print out all three. They are not in a standard format. As of today Experian gives you a summary and a detail report while TransUnion and Equifax gives you just the detail. Print the details.

They are going to try to sell you the credit scores and other things because Congress only mandated that they provide the detail free and not the scores. Don’t buy the credit scores as they don’t matter. I can hear the chorus of voices saying but, but I saw cute commercials showing how if my credit score is below this number I am in trouble. Well, the secret about the scores is they are non-standard, each credit agency has their own scoring method (don’t ask they will never fully explain the math since they consider it a trade secret) but the kicker is that a lot of loan companies don’t even use them. They use the details to create their own internal scoring system.

All the scoring systems are based on the detail which you printed out. If the details are correct then the individual scoring system result will be also.

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/microsites/freereports/index.shtml

Once you get the details printed out everything is fairly simple. Look for discrepancies and if you find any each agency has a method of how you can dispute what is in your report. Below is a list of things to look for.

Negative Items

1. Late payments - for each account it will show on a month by month basis if you paid beyond their grace payment date. If it is incorrect dispute it, offer proof it was paid on time if you have it.

2. Collection items - these are accounts created when an account is paid so late that the original owner of the debt gave up and sold it to a credit collection agency. In this case the original account holder stays on your report and also the credit collection agency is there so it counts as a double negative. It sounds wrong but is legal. If you have more than one collection account for a single debt you can have one of them removed since you can only be in collection with one agency per debt. You always want to pay the credit collection agency after you get something in writing that they will show it paid in full and perhaps even remove it from your credit report. Absolutely never let them access your bank accounts through electronic means to withdraw the funds themselves.

3. If you have been in a bankruptcy send your papers listing all the creditors involved to each credit agency. They will stay on your report but will be marked as a bankruptcy to indicate you no longer owe the money. Sometimes you have to resend it and point out individual accounts which didn’t get marked properly. These items should drop off your credit report after either seven or eleven years and you may have to remind the agencies to do this.

4. When you dispute an item through a credit reporting agency they just go to the company reporting the event and ask for a clarification. If the company disagrees it remains on your report. In that case you need to directly contact the company and straighten it out with them and get the result in writing to send to the credit agencies. The exception to this is if you have legal proof like the previously mentioned bankruptcy papers in which case the credit reporting agency will just use the legal document as proof.

5. If you have a negative item which is in fact accurate you have the right to post an explanation on your report if you want to. Of course this won’t affect a credit score but if a loan company were to review the details it might help.

Factual Items

1. If your report shows you owe a large amount of money besides your house mortgage it could be a negative against you as far as getting a new loan even if you never paid late.

2. If your report shows that you have been shopping for a car and a boat and a personal loan all at the same time it will be a negative against you. Typically if it shows that four different car dealerships ran your credit within a month or two it only counts as a single car shopping event as far as the score goes. The items themselves will have to stay listed as directed by federal law.

3. Oddly enough having a house loan can be a plus since they know where they can find you.

4. You may notice that some items are not on all reports. This is not an error since each loan company decides which agencies they will report to.

Credit Repair Scams:

See I told you it wasn’t all that complicated. Of course you could just pay some company to handle all this for you so you don’t have to bother with it. It’s kind of like mowing your own yard, it’s not that challenging but some prefer to pay others to do it for them. A few items to be careful about are listed below.

1. They have all your information SS# and everything on your credit report. Make sure they are legit themselves.

2. One thing to look out for is that some disreputable companies try to get you to falsify  some documentation to send in to the credit agencies which could result in some nasty legal action against you.

3. Another technique they use is to repeatedly dispute each negative item on your report, if the original owner of the loan doesn’t respond within 30 days the item gets removed. Law of averages says somebody will eventually mess up and it will be removed. What they don’t tell you is that the next month it gets reported again so gets reapplied to your report.

Plan B

So if you followed all the rules and you are still have false information on your report what do you do? Some Congressmen are very active in the consumer area and can get your case escalated with a simple phone call. Other then that you will have to decide if it is worth retaining a lawyer to look into it.

Just the facts Ma’am

Just the facts Ma’am - Joe Friday

Since the internet and cable TV went mainstream information is easily accessible so people no longer have to rely on the local nightly news and regional newspapers which quite often showed a distinct bias on their reporting of some subjects.

While it is human nature to try to influence people to your viewpoint it interferes with the reporting on the basic facts when the facts are interwoven with the writers opinions and interpretations.

Then there are the sources with agendas who purposely spin the facts to try to influence others to join their cause. They are easy to spot if you pay attention to their track record. Once challenged on a subject they immediately state that is was a mistake, it was misspoken or an aberration which may be true for some but for others it is a ongoing practice of altering the facts to prove their point without regard for the truth.

This is not to say that the new information sources are any less biased but that you have access to a lot of different biases which makes it easy to spot the different spins on a particular subject.

So what to do when you are looking for the facts?
1. Don’t rely on a single source, get as many as possible.

2. Take them all with a grain of salt all the time. Just because you had good results previously with a source doesn’t mean they are not biased about other topics.

3. If all the sources agree on certain facts then that is the part that is most likely correct.

4. Don’t become jaded, innocent mistakes are made even by the best.

5. Make a habit of thinking objectively and don’t just take others opinions as facts.