1 – Thou Shalt Repair Thine Own Credit
If you have the right training, it is not difficult to repair your credit. And you will not have anyone wreaking havoc with your personal information as was done with me.
It just is not wise to hand over your personal data if you can help it.
2 – If thou do not wisheth to repair thine own credit, then have a clear statement of work
DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT, EVER hand over money or signed contract without the credit repair company giving you a CLEAR statement of work of exactly what will be done and when.
Why is this important? Because you do not want people getting loosey goosey with your credit file and writing threatening letters and potentially closing accounts that you did not want touched. Yes, I AM writing from personal experience and I hope you dont fall into the same trap that I almost fell into.
3 – If they cannot remove hard inquiries in 1 week or less, they are not the best at removing inquiries
CreditRepairCo.net takes the checkered flag when it comes to removing inquiries. 72 hours or less is possible with them. With most places 2-4 weeks is acceptable.
4 – Have a focus and trod the beaten path – Dont try to patch things together
If you want a mortgage and your mortgage broker has worked with the same credit repair company for the past X years, then use them.
If you want unsecured funding and your resource has successfully used a certain place, then use them.
5 – If they are claiming identity theft, put them under contract to require a screenshot with all identifying elements provided governing bodies or liability to sue for no less than 250,000 per failure (to make sure they don’t F it up)
What exactly am I saying here? Ok, one tactic of credit repair firms to get an account closed and swept off your credit profile is to make a claim that the account does not belong to you. In the process, they will file a claim at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau with your proof-of-identification (driver license, SSAN card) and address. But they will also give them a phone and before any change can be made to their claim, you must provide the phone number provided at the time of claim filing or they will not let you into the claim.
You heard that right
Even if you know your name, address, SSAN, driver license number, etc, they will not consider that it is you calling about your identity theft claim until you provide the phone number provided with the filing of the claim EVEN IF THAT IS NOT YOUR NUMBER.
Yes, I have heard of people with personal pain from this. Some junior credit repair weenie got happy with their personal info and decided to sweep every large account off their file even though they had clearly told them exactly and only what they wanted done. Next thing you know, they’re getting phone calls from accounts they sure-as-hell-do-not-want-to-close saying that they have 72 hours to call back or they will be closing such-and-such account… and this is for certain accounts where $2,000 to $5,000 had been sent to zero-out the balances recently. And all because someone did not listen and also because the person had no recourse to the own claims about their identity, there was almost a huge catastrophe of valuable credit accounts getting closed!!!
So do what you can to make sure you know everything submitted, which is why Commandment Number One says: “DO IT YOURSELF”!
