How do I find a legitimate, premium credit repair service?

Question

I'm trying to find a premium credit repair service to help work towards the goal of removing all included in bankruptcy trade-lines from my credit report. In the past I have dealt with disputing negatives in my credit report on my own with reasonable success, however, this is time consuming, and I would expect that a business that does this as their main focus could potentially be more effective.

Thus far, I have been using lexingtonlaw.com which appears to be the leader in this industry in terms of sheer numbers of customers, etc. They are reasonably priced at $40 per month, and challenge one-third of your items each month in rotation to avoid getting deemed frivolous by the credit reporting agencies.

However, I'm not too impressed with them. For one, each time I call to talk to a real person, I get someone who appears to know less than I know about this subject, but they treat me like they are an expert. Ironically, much worse issues is that they keep making errors transcribing my credit report into their system, and consequently, I've spent a lot of time trying to get corrections to my credit reports as stored in their systems. Finally, they don't have any process for doing Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) 623(a)(8) investigations with the original creditor, so I feel they are leaving valuable tools unutilized.

I've tried to research this issue on the internet and it is very difficult. Very little real impartial information is out there, most websites appear to be veiled marketing for service providers. It seems this industry is very corrupt and filled with scams.

For example, one company I contacted wish for a large up front fee to be held in escrow which is released if they get just one deletion, yet they claim they will do much better and it is not worth the money to get a disgruntled customer that would bad mouth them. They seem to have no negative reviews on the internet, nor positive ones! I asked for some references, but they never got back to me with names I could contact.

Each company promises the world in vague details, but when I press for data like deletion rates for customers, they are mum. I would expect a reputable company could offer compelling statistical data to sell their services, such as imagine: "we get an average of 63% of negative trade-lines removed from our customer's reports in six months".

I am willing to pay for this service, but only for a company that performs above the norm and can demonstrate this somehow. The problem seems to be finding any such company. I expect such a company to take an approach that is custom tailored to my situation, and ideally partners with me to discuss how best to accomplish this.

Can anyone recommend specific companies they have used successfully and why they feel this company did a good job?

Answer 1

Just a word of warning: Most of the companies that promise to repair your credit are scams or close to them.

You could just as easily do yourself what they are going to charge you for. Essentially they write a letter to the credit agencies disputing most or all of the bad stuff on your credit report. When you do that, the credit agency sends an inquiry to the company that reported the negative information requiring them to justify it. If that company doesn't respond within x days, they remove the item from your credit report.

These companies depend on the fact that some companies aren't going to hit that deadline or even respond. Perhaps they are just too busy to hassle with providing backup documentation for a $20 late payment. They are banking on getting a few of these cheap "outs" to your benefit and charging you for what amounts to sending out a bunch of form letters.

If you don't mind writing a bunch of letters, then you can save a lot of money and get the exact same results. These companies want to pretend they have some insider knowledge or fancy lawyers that know special credit-magic, but they generally don't.

The only option I'd consider legitimate and not a waste of your time is a referral from the non-profit National Federation for Credit Counseling. They aren't going to "fix your credit", but will give you advice on budgeting and repairing your credit on your own.

Answer 2

If the bad credit items are accurate, disputing the accuracy of the items seems at best, unethical. If the bad credit items are inaccurate, the resolution process provided by each of the 3 credit bureaus, while time consuming, seems the way to go.