Your credit report contains information about where you live, how you pay your bills, and whether you've been sued or have filed for bankruptcy. Credit reporting companies sell the information in your report to creditors, insurers, employers, and other businesses that use it to evaluate your applications for credit, insurance, employment, or renting a home.
Don't let credit report errors prevent you from obtaining the financing you need!
Credit repair is a multistep process that focuses on auditing your credit report and finding and disputing errors. Here are the basic steps we take to repair your credit:
Credit report analysis — We obtain your credit reports and create a plan targeting the questionable negative items affecting your credit score.
Credit disputing — Our team will send the appropriate correspondence to dispute and challenge inaccurate negative items on your behalf.
Dispute escalating — For negative items requiring additional correspondence, we keep the process going and ensure your credit rights are fairly represented.
Credit monitoring — Through the online portal and app, we offer 24/7 access to your credit score analyses and credit counseling solutions to help you reach your credit goals.
Make sure your full name, home address, date of birth and phone number are all correct. Errors in your personal information could be a matter of having a common name, but other times, it could be a red flag for fraud.
The public records portion of your credit report, which shows accounts that went into collections, bankruptcies and judgments, tends to be laced with errors.
Make sure every credit card, line of credit and loan that you have opened is on your credit report and ensure that your accounts accurately portray your payment history. If you're paying on time, your report should reflect that. If the creditor is in the wrong and isn't posting updated payments, it will mar your reputation.
Credit inquiries that you didn't authorize, and credit cards, lines of credit or other loans that don't belong to you are red flags.
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Claim your free credit consultationCONSUMER CREDIT FILE RIGHTS UNDER STATE AND FEDERAL LAW
You have a right to dispute inaccurate information in your credit report by contacting the credit bureau directly. However, neither you nor any company or organization has the right to have accurate, current, and verifiable information removed from your credit report. The credit bureau must remove accurate, negative information from your report only if it is over 7 years old. Bankruptcy information can be reported for 10 years.
You have a right to obtain a copy of your credit report from a credit bureau. You may be charged a reasonable fee for obtaining said Credit Bureau. There is no fee, however, if you have been turned down for credit, employment, insurance, or a rental dwelling because of information in your credit report within the preceding 60 days. The credit bureau must provide someone to help you interpret the information in your credit file. You are entitled to receive a free copy of your credit report if you are unemployed and intend to apply for employment in the next 60 days, if you are a recipient of public welfare assistance, or if you have reason to believe that there is inaccurate information in your credit report due to fraud.
You have a right to sue an organization that violates the Credit Repair Organization Act. This law prohibits deceptive practices by financial organizations.
Credit bureaus are required to follow reasonable procedures to ensure that the information they report is accurate. However, mistakes may occur.
You may, on your own, notify a credit bureau in writing that you dispute the accuracy of information in your credit file. The credit bureau must then reinvestigate and modify or remove inaccurate or incomplete information. The credit bureau may not charge any fee for this service. Any pertinent information and copies of all documents you have concerning an error should be given to the credit bureau.
If the credit bureau's reinvestigation does not resolve the dispute to your satisfaction, you may send a brief statement to the credit bureau, to be kept in your file, explaining why you think the record is inaccurate. The credit bureau must include a summary of your statement about disputed information with any report it issues about you.
The Federal Trade Commission regulates credit bureaus and credit repair organizations. For more information contact:
Your credit score is the most important three-digit number in your life. Improving it can save you hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Of course you can! Many of our readers have cleared up blemishes on their reports. Your credit score is the most important three-digit number in your life. Improving your credit can lead to savings of hundreds of thousands of dollars over the life of a mortgage.
Sometimes, life can get a little out of hand and you may fall behind in bills, run up a lot of debt, or make other mistakes that can ruin your credit score. A bad credit report will raise your interest rates and make it even more difficult to catch up. That is where we come in.
We raise credit scores by working with you, your creditors, and the credit bureaus to remove negative items from your credit report and add positives.
We stand out from the rest because we work with you to give you the education you need to maintain healthy credit. We are always available to answer any questions you may have.
Whether you are looking for a home loan, refinance, auto loan, new job, or just want a fresh start, we will help reach your end goal through credit education, guidance, and credit repair.
Bankruptcy
Foreclosure
Repossession
Loan Default
Court Judgments
Collections
Past due payments
Late Payments
Credit Rejections
Credit Inquiries
Challenge everything! Shoot for complete deletion. Severely negative listings must be disputed on the basis of complete deletion or not at all.
Send everything registered or certified mail. This gives you leverage if the CRAs don't respond in the time frame required by law.
Keep copies of all correspondence, notes on telephone conversations, and records of when letters were sent and received.
Credit bureaus have 30 days to investigate disputes. They must provide written notice of results within 5 days of completion.
Compare your original credit report with the new one. See what changed and plan your next dispute if needed.
Wait 60 days between disputes of the same listing. Be persistent but not threatening. Stay friendly and polite.
Best outcome — negative item removed completely
Item remains; try disputing again later with different approach
Information within listing found inaccurate — item becomes positive or is deleted
Let our credit experts help you improve your credit score and unlock better interest rates, lower payments, and financial freedom.
Your credit is your financial future. Let's fix it together!
Bad credit is when you've had numerous instances of not paying your bills on time. Bad credit causes numerous problems in your financial life.
Bad credit is when you've had numerous instances of not paying your bills on time. Bad credit causes numerous problems in your financial life. It's typically measured by the number of negative listings in credit reports and low credit scores generated by those reports.
Anything under a 620 credit score is generally considered bad. 620 is generally considered bad when you're looking at the credit score range in the credit scoring models for which 850 ranks the highest and 300 ranks the lowest (for FICO and VantageScore 3.0 models).
Back to TopNegative listings don't cause bad credit, they are symptoms of bad financial habits. These listings tell a story of:
Only a lifestyle of living within your means, and habits that include attention to personal fiscal responsibilities can provide a lifetime of good credit.
Bad credit can result in:
Join Thousands Taking Control of Their Credit. Many consumers are improving their credit using SmartDispute.ai, an automated tool that identifies and helps remove the accounts dragging down your score.
LEARN MOREMany employers look at credit reports when making hiring decisions. Some of them run credit checks on all job applicants, but most employers limit their credit checks to certain positions, as it generally costs money to do a credit check. For instance, if the job requires the handling of money or access to personal information, a credit check is likely. In any case, however, your written permission is required first.
Back to TopThere are a few circumstances in which bad credit goes away:
Credit repair is the process of improving your credit. This is accomplished by:
Though you can pay a credit repair company to do it for you, repairing your credit is something you can do on your own for free using our DIY credit repair guide.
Back to TopThe credit repair process includes:
If you have errors on your credit reports that can be successfully disputed, you could see improvement in your credit in under 6 months. To the other extreme, if you have a lot of negative listings that are not in error and a lot of debt to pay off, credit repair could take years. In other words, it takes as long as it takes.
Back to TopYou can help yourself with credit repair or hire a credit repair company to do it for you. If you choose DIY credit repair (which we recommend you try first), refer to our free credit repair guide and forum. If you're considering a credit repair company, find a legitimate credit repair company.
Back to TopThough the credit repair process starts with you, it is the credit bureaus that ultimately make changes to your credit reports. So if you find an error in one of your credit reports, the first step is to send a credit dispute to the appropriate credit bureau (via regular mail with return receipt requested).
Back to TopAbsolutely. There is nothing a credit repair company can do for you that you cannot do for yourself, for free – from disputing listings on your credit reports to requesting debt validation from collectors, to the settling of old debts. Our DIY credit repair guide will walk you through the process every step of the way.
Back to TopWhen a credit bureau receives a dispute, they forward it to the data furnisher that provided the disputed information. The data furnisher is asked to verify its accuracy. If verified, the disputed item remains unchanged. If unverified, the credit bureau should correct it.
For more details, here's how the bureaus describe their dispute process: TransUnion, Experian, Equifax.
Back to TopWhen you receive the initial communication from a collector trying to collect an unpaid debt from you, you have the right to request proof of the debt (provided you do so within 30 days of the initial communication). This is called debt validation.
Unless they validate the debt, the collector cannot continue collection attempts. In some cases, this includes reporting the debt to the credit bureaus.
Credit repair companies get paid to help consumers clean up and restore their credit. What they can and cannot do is determined by the Credit Repair Organizations Act (CROA). While there are legitimate credit repair companies that follow these rules, there are many violators, which is why it is so important for you to watch out for red flags.
Back to TopThe Credit Repair Organizations Act (CROA) was signed into law in 1996. The CROA prohibits credit repair companies from:
As with any industry, the quality of credit repair companies depends on which one you're working with. In the best case scenario, the company you hire has qualified staff who have an in-depth understanding of credit repair techniques. Worst case scenario, the company has no clue what it's doing and, in fact, ends up doing nothing at all, or actually makes things worse for you.
Back to TopIf you hire a credit repair company, the services they provide are similar to the techniques you would use if you were to repair your credit yourself:
By law (under the CROA), credit repair companies can only collect fees from you for work that has already been completed. This means any credit repair company that wants to charge upfront fees – before doing any work for you – should be avoided.
Note, though, it's common to be charged an initial fee followed by a regular monthly fee for ongoing service.
Back to TopIt depends on the credit repair company. Unfortunately, there are plenty of scammers out there. It's probably not legitimate if they:
It is only worth paying for credit repair services if all the following are true:
"My credit was a mess and I thought I'd never qualify for a mortgage. Miguel connected me with credit repair resources and guided me on what to pay off. Within 8 months, my score jumped 120 points and I bought my first home!"
"Miguel didn't just tell us to fix our credit — he gave us a step-by-step plan. We disputed errors, paid down balances, and saw our scores improve dramatically. We qualified for a much better rate because of his advice."
"We had no idea our credit was holding us back. Miguel reviewed our reports, found errors, and recommended simple steps to improve. Six months later, we qualified for a conventional loan with a great rate. He changed our lives!"
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