You have probably seen the ads on television or heard them on the radio offering to clean up your credit report to help you buy that new car you have your eye on. Companies advertise, many including a guarantee that if they cannot get your credit report cleaned up and allow you to receive a higher score, they will give you your money back. The problems is that with many of these companies, there is not much they can legally do to removed all of the negative items on your report, provided they are legitimately presented to the three credit reporting agencies.
Today, a person's credit report is being touted as a do or die score and those with a higher score, considered an excellent credit risk, are realizing the benefits of a high score. Lower interest rates on everything from their home and car to credit card offers as well as zero money down on many big-ticket purchases. They also receive lower insurance premiums along with a myriad of benefits available only to those with superior credit standing.
Many people with a less than stellar credit rating are using credit repair services to help clean up all the negatives on their report, hoping to be able to take advantage of some of these offers. The reality is that the only items that can legally be removed from a person's credit report are those that should have been removed due to time, or should never have been there in the first place. Credit reporting agencies also have the luxury of making the consumer prove something should be removed before taking action on removing it. Many believe it is contrary to innocent until proven guilty.
A consumer can obtain a copy of their credit report for free and if they find items on their report that they can verify does not belong, they can notify the credit reporting agency in writing and if the consumer is shown to be correct the item will be removed. However, since the three agencies do not necessarily work together, they will have to make the same request to all of them in order to clean up their report.
If a negative item on their report is valid, not even the best credit repair services will be successful at removing it, despite their claims of cleaning up the report within a week or so. No credit repair services company can promise to wipe the slate clean to allow a consumer to start over and those making that claim may be falsely misrepresenting their abilities.
While the credit repair services or debt consolidation can take a lot of the legwork out of cleaning up a person's credit report, there have been a few that have introduced falsified documentation on behalf of the clients. Even if the consumer has no knowledge of the false information submitted, they can still be held accountable since they hired the credit repair services company to help up their score. Be sure of who you are dealing with and to get a detailed itinerary of how the clean up process is going to work and then be realistic about the expected results.
