The Law is on Your Side

Many consumers have the mistaken idea that credit bureaus are federally supported organizations backed by a vast array of laws meant to protect creditors. Nothing could be further from the truth. Aside from the government simply recognizing the need for credit reporting, credit bureaus have absolutely nothing to do with the government. Credit bureaus are simply huge bureaucratic companies which exist for the soul purpose of making money by selling information about you-information they never bothered to verify.

Can Bad Credit be Deleted?

Yes, it can. Despite the fervent proclamations of bureaucrats and credit bureaus everywhere, a simple fact remains: negative credit listings are deleted from peoples’ credit reports by the thousands each and every day.

A few years ago, an attorney from Lexington Law. visited with a regulatory agency for a casual conversation with two agents. The Agency’s office, as a matter of course, believed the credit bureaus’ claim that bad credit couldn’t be deleted. The visiting Lexington attorney asked, “How many negative listings would you have to see deleted from consumer credit reports before you would believe that bad credit can be deleted: ten? fifty? a hundred? one thousand?” The agents responded with only blank stares.

Can credit repair companies be trusted?

Many “credit repair” companies claim to remove negative credit with the flick of a wrist. Their advertisements make bold assertions and money-back guarantees: “Bankruptcy, tax liens, judgments… no problem!! One hundred percent guaranteed!! Credit report 100% cleared in 30 days!!” Can they really make such sweeping guarantees?

While some credit repair companies are outright frauds, others are not fraudulent and they use the dispute process to obtain impressive results. In fact, they delete thousands of negative credit listings every day. There is a company called, Lexington Law who has been doing it for 15 years. Click Here to learn more.

Legal Credit Repair Methods

To better understand what legal credit repair is, it would be helpful to understand a few types of illegal credit repair:

Illegal: Changing your social security number to obtain a clean bill of credit.

If any company should suggest this type of credit repair, report them to the authorities.

Illegal: Disputing every item on your credit report, regardless of nature.
The Fair Credit Reporting Act specifically states that only items that are unverifiable, inaccurate or misleading should be disputed. Items that are clearly yours, and reflect your credit history should not be disputed.

Understanding Your Credit Score

What does your score mean?

This rating system is meant to develop a snapshot of the risk you currently represent to a lender. Several parameters in your credit file, including length of credit history, number of open accounts, loans, mortgages, public records, and others are formulated to produce a three-digit score between about 300 and 950. There are other scores used by lenders and insurance companies (some of which are developed by FICO®) such as Application and Behavior scores. These other scores take other information into account. Usually a lender will use a combination of your credit score with other factors when determining your risk. They all have the same objective, to determine the borrower’s potential risk. Regardless of whether the score was generated by FICO® or a system based on FICO® parameters, they all yield an industry standard three-digit score. This score places the borrower in one of three main categories (we named the third one ourselves.)