What better way for scam artists to take advantage of people during these fearful and depressing times? Playing on the fear many Americans are feeling during today’s troubling times, scammers offer a ray of hope to fix your credit, but it will cost you real money and your credit will not be repaired.
Offers of credit repair abound, and they’re meant to take your money. The fact is, credit repair is mostly a myth. If there is a legitimate mistake on your credit report, yes, that can be and should be repaired. But these scam-artists promise (for a fee) to remove even the negative items that are not mistakes. That’s a scam. You can’t remove that late payment with VISA, or the foreclosure in 2004 or the repossessed car in 2006 or the collection account with the cellphone company. If you really made the late payment or didn’t pay the bill—and if it’s on your report—there it will stay.
I have this solid, granite-like advice for you: NEVER, EVER PAY ANYONE TO REPAIR YOUR CREDIT.
If you care about your credit report, I have provided you on this website with all the tools you need. On my “Useful Links” page you will find the tools necessary to:
1.Establish credit: if you’ve never had it or if you are recovering from bankruptcy
2. Manage credit: how to find the best credit cards, how to shop carefully with and for credit, how to understand what goes in to a credit score.
3. Repair credit: how you can legitimately repair mistakes on your report by yourself, for free.
This morning I updated the link to the Federal Trade Commission website to its most excellent article about repairing credit.
Yesterday I met with a couple who had spent a considerable sum of money with a scam-artist credit repair firm. In front of me I had a credit report I ran for this couple last March and the latest report we ran a few days ago. The couple explained how they paid these scammers to repair their credit since last we met in March. I saw no difference in the 2 reports except the credit scores were slightly higher. The reason the scores were higher is pretty simple: the “bad stuff” has aged and because it is “older” the credit report got a slight (18 points) bump up in the score.
The money spent on the credit repair was lost and wasted and tossed in the trash. The scam-artists did nothing except take this hard-working couple’s money. Disgusting.
Visit my “Useful Links” page and you’ll find all you need to care for your credit, from soup to nuts, A to Z, beginning to end.