Free Credit Repair Advice – How to Repair Your Own Credit

When you are trying to repair your credit, it may be best to try to fix it yourself. If you suffer from bad credit you will find that numerous firms will contact you claiming to be able to assist you in rebuilding your credit for a fee and once you hire them they will take care of everything. However, the truth of the matter is that fixing your credit on your own may be the best thing you could possibly do.

Fixing your own credit can be a difficult process but many who opt to fix their own credit do not find it that difficult to do. More and more people are beginning to repair their own credit. If you want to go this route you need to first contact one or all the three major credit reporting agencies, Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian. Ask them to send you a free credit report. The FACT act was passed in 2001 by Congress and the act lets every consumer obtain one free copy of their credit report annually.

Once you have obtained a copy of your credit report, you will need to take some time to check all the information for accuracy. You will most likely find some mistakes. These discrepancies may be due to the fact that that an old account that you had has been paid off but it is still being reflected on you current statement.

Once you have made a list of all of the mistakes on your credit report, mark them on the credit report or on a sheet of paper. Send a copy of the report to the agency you obtained your credit report from. You may want to contact them by telephone as well. When they receive your complaint they will ask for proof that what is on the report is indeed an error. This is why it is best to send a copy of your credit report to be on the safe side. When they check the error they will notify you saying that they have fixed the mistake or that they do not have enough proof to take the mistake off of your credit report. If you want to successfully improve your credit you need to be stringent when it comes to making sure that all the information on the credit report is correct and reflected on your statement.

A big part of beginning any type of credit repair plan, whether you are repairing your credit yourself or using a debt counselor, is making a long-term plan to keep control of your finances so that you will not make the same mistakes you made with your credit in the past. Credit repair counselors are there to assist you but what is the use of paying their fee if you later find out the firm is not reputable?

Repairing your credit is very time consuming and it will require that you take it very seriously. Over a period of time, you will see the positive and favorable results. You will soon know that these results came about through your own motivation and your own efforts. There is absolutely no better feeling.

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The next step is to take stock of your progress on the items you have submitted for dispute to each credit bureau. The result of each item’s dispute will dictate what you do next. Basically, you will get one of the following results from your itemized disputes:

1. The item(s) you are disputing was not mentioned in the original dispute letter, or the description of the item and reason for dispute requires further clarification from you. In this case, once you respond with more info, the 30 day clock starts all over again.
2. The disputed item was verified and proven to be accurate. In this case, you move to the next phase of your plan, which I will explain in a minute.
3. The disputed item was not verifiable in time, or at all. IN this case, the item will be changed to positive status, corrected, or removed from the report altogether.

Obviously, the last outcome is what you are hoping for. If the item comes back as verified, I recommend next doing what is called a “Method of Verification” request. This is where the credit bureau has to respond to you within 15 days and explain to you the method they used to verify the negative item on your report. This is when you will get a letter from them stating that they used their software program eOscar to verify your item electronically.

eOscar is a bad way to verify because the clerk entering in your info just puts in a code to classify your dispute. This makes the dispute very generic, and can help you in a court case if you need to go to court to remove the negative items. Because of this non-personal way of verifying info, this tells us that they never contacted the information source, which is called the ‘Original Creditor’. This is good, this means that you can now contact the OC and ask them to investigate the item, stating that it is not valid.

The OC is under no obligation to verify the item for you, so don’t use the word verification , you just say investigation.  This way they have to respond to you, as stated in the FACT act of 2003. Send the original creditor a letter requesting that they provide you with documentation that the account is yours and the debt is yours. Never admit to anything. The truth is, if the account is a couple years old, they probably won’t have any original records. Then they will have to report to the OC that the account is not a valid item.

Wait for their response for a couple weeks, then if they don’t respond, send a more threatening letter, stating that you will sue them if they don’t prove it is yours or remove it. This method has worked many many times, so it is worth the effort.

Be sure to check back often for the third step in the credit repair process.

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