Can Credit Repair Services Be Trusted?

Correcting one error on your credit report takes an average of about four hours. That includes obtaining your credit reports, analyzing them, reviewing and highlighting errors, documenting the mistakes, typing up your letter and mailing it to all 3 credit bureaus. For a small fee, credit repair services offer to do this daunting legwork for you. They add professionalism and they save you time. Most of them have been doing it for years. They have the experience and know how to get results and deal with the formidable credit bureaus.

Unfortunately, it is risky to trust anyone to help you restore your credit. It's estimated that fraudulent credit repair services have cheated Americans out of more than fifty million dollars. The FTC has come down hard on such companies and has since introduced the Credit Repair Organizations Act. Under the CROA, credit repair services must follow specific guidelines which are intended to protect consumers.

Can credit repair services guarantee results? Absolutely not. No credit repair service is so good that they can guarantee a specific outcome. However, many credit repair services offer a warranty, where as if certain results don't occur, they will give you a full or partial refund. This type of "guaranteed results or your money back" type of guarantee is legal and should be taken advantage of.

Not surprisingly, the credit bureaus have declared war against the credit repair services and those selling do-it-yourself credit repair courses. The bureaus lambaste credit repair services in the media and send anti-credit repair literature to anyone whom they suspect of using credit repair services. The bureaus unflinchingly deny that accurate information can be removed from a credit report.

The simple truth is that you do not have to endure bad credit for seven to ten years as long as you feel comfortable challenging the accuracy or verifiability of your credit listings. If so, it is possible to restore creditworthiness within a much shorter time.

However you decide to address your credit challenges, realize that regardless of what you may hear in the news media, thousands before you have sought help and restored their credit. They can show you their homes, cars, and credit cards. Despite the newspaper articles, TV reports, and other credit bureau propaganda to the contrary, the simple truth remains: you can restore your credit.