Finance

How to Fix Your Credit Fast and Easily in 3 Easy Steps

A HOAX? Do you recall the commercials warning about the devastation that can result from identity theft? You can apply for a new SSN from the Social Security Administration if this ever happens to you. You can rest assured that the advertising producers don’t want you to know about the said fact.

The Federal Trade Commission is quoted twice below:

Fixing your credit might be easiest if you do it on your own.

The need for consumer credit repair services has been well recognized. Credit repair companies sometimes charge hundreds of dollars monthly for unsatisfactory service.

The Scheme: Con artists nationwide target people with low credit scores every day. They guarantee improved access to finance, housing, employment, and insurance in exchange for payment. The truth is that they are unable to provide. Most of these companies disappear with your money after you’ve paid them hundreds or thousands of dollars in fees without doing anything to enhance your credit score.

No more excerpts from the Federal Trade Commission.

You can save money on firms and lawyers by sending monthly boilerplate letters. These standard letters are recognized by credit bureaus and processed as such. Credit repair alone is the best option because it saves time and money.

The following is a comprehensive, high-level plan anyone may use to fix their credit. It should be adequate for the majority of credit restoration needs.

Here are the three easy ways to get your credit back on track. Very simple. Later on, I’ll explain everything in greater depth.

Obtain all three of your credit reports. Consumers are entitled to a free credit report from each bureau once per year if requested.

Second, go through the reports and find the problems. Reading a credit report requires some work, but it’s not too difficult.

Third, file a dispute for the changes or deletions you want to be made.

It’s not as scary or tough to fix your credit as you think. Simply put, all that’s required is a few short letters. The finest notes are concise and to the point. Remember: “The best letters are short, simple, direct, AND DO NOT look like form letters.” Never explain anything, not even anything as serious as a black mark on your credit report that you can’t have removed.

Your MAIN WEAPON is called “Debt Validation.” It’s the primary tool you’ll utilize to fix your credit. A negative item on your credit report must be removed if the credit bureau cannot verify the debt within thirty (30) days of your request. If you want to fix your credit, you need to act quickly.

Credit reporting agencies are massive data warehouses that get new information daily. They can’t keep up with the volume of details arriving every day. They blindly accept the data without ever checking its accuracy.

Here are some of the secrets they’d rather you didn’t uncover.

The Consumer Credit Reporting Reform Act of 1996 and the Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1971 regulate the practices of credit reporting companies.

A credit report entry must be removed if it cannot be verified. The credit reporting agency is required by law to remove any negative information from your file if it cannot confirm its accuracy. To be valid, an argument must be more than just “yep; they said it’s yours.” It requires real work on your part.

You have the right to dispute any unfavorable information on your credit report. The investigation must be redone, and if the item cannot be validated within a “reasonable amount of time” (within 30 days), it must be removed from the file. However, they can reject your request as “frivolous” if they see fit.

Creditors often miss the deadline to re-verify, and credit bureaus are often too swamped to give your dispute the attention it deserves. The content in question must be removed.

Validation is more of a challenge the older the item is. After a year or two, no records may remain to verify the information.

Since September 2005, consumers have been entitled to a free copy of their credit report from each of the three major credit bureaus once per year. They have established one central website and a toll-free telephone number to make getting your free annual report from the three major nationwide consumer reporting firms easier.

Visit http://www.annualcreditreport.com/ or call 877-322-8228 to request your free credit reports today. Your credit report should be obtained from the three major credit reporting organizations. This is something you need to do annually.

Note that these organizations MAY impose fees in exchange for access to your “credit score.” They dislike providing services for free. Your credit score, however, is not required.

All you need is a free report. You need only review the information already added to your file by other individuals. When you delete errors from your credit report, your score will rise.

All dealings with Credit Bureaus should be conducted digitally. DO NOT communicate with the Credit Bureaus over the internet in any way, shape, or form other than through http://www.annualcreditreport.com to obtain your free reports once per year. Any credit repair technique that requires you to use the mail will fail.

When you obtain your credit report, study it carefully for any unfavorable entries and follow the steps below. Send a short letter including the following details via certified mail. I’m challenging the accuracy of this (these) entries on my credit report. (Here, describe why you are disputing the items; for example, “You are misreporting the information,” “This account is not mine,” etc.) Please check and make sure it () is correct.

WORD OF CAUTION: “Verify” has particular and weighty legal connotations. In the 5th edition of Black’s Law Dictionary, the term is “to confirm or substantiate by oath or affidavit.”

In all letters of dispute, the phrase “verify” must appear. You probably won’t have to go to court over a credit dispute, but if you do, the fact that you used the word “verify” in all of your correspondence could be crucial. Document your request for verification and your understanding of its legal definition in the court record.

A signed contract copy is NOT valid as a legally binding agreement. It has the same legal standing as a photocopy of a $100 bill or one of your checks. A signature is easily replicable by anyone.

For the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act, a signed judgment order or an accounting signed and dated by the person responsible for maintaining the account’s general ledger will validate the debt. There ought to be uniform standards for verification across credit reporting organizations. Although I’ve never had to defend my usage of these validation standards in court, I can say that they have served my clients well.

Get back to working on your credit. The credit reporting companies will review the item or items you have disputed after receiving your dispute letters and provide you with a concise response. They have 30 days from receiving your certified letter requesting confirmation to respond. Send another accredited letter with the message, “Your alleged validation is not sufficient to show that I am a debtor to that creditor,” with only ten days left. Take it off my record.

They won’t be able to review it before the deadline. Thus, it will be removed from your file. Even if they give adequate validation, it must be spot-on, or the data must be erased from your file.

You should always, always, always only correspond with these people through the mail. The traditional adage says, “If it isn’t written, it wasn’t said.”

First, you should only ever send certified letters that require a signature upon receipt.

Second, save extra copies of everything in a designated folder if you must present it in court.

Third, you should always request a copy of your corrected file where the unfavorable information has been erased.

Concerning letters of protest:

You aim to make your letters appear “unprofessional,” so credit reporting agencies won’t flag them as potential fraud.
Do not use the bureau’s given disagreement forms or case numbers.
Avoid using a generic “fill in the blanks” letter format.
Avoid using a preprinted letterhead.
Send a short letter instead, either typed on your computer and printed off or written by hand.

WARNING: Only dispute three (3) items at a time if there are errors on your credit report. If there are other issues you wish to discuss on your credit report, you must wait sixty (60) days. Suppose credit reporting organizations see that you are making repeated, baseless challenges in an attempt to have all lousy material removed from your file. In that case, they can legally treat your disputes as frivolous.

Having a bankruptcy or other legal entries on your credit report? Some words of caution. Removing these things from your credit report will be challenging without employing more sophisticated methods.

While expecting a significant jump in your credit score in just 30 days is unrealistic, you should see a noticeable uptick. It’s not the same for everyone. Thirty days may be sufficient when only two or three changes are necessary.

Curt Dillion has been helping people sort out their credit and debt issues for years. His Secrets Of The Credit Industry website features cutting-edge methods and answers and professional writing for credit rehabilitation.

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