Sometimes we may have a credit report issue, and choosing the right credit repair company is confusing. This is what to look out for when hiring one.
You own a house, have some credit cards, and you drive a car. All of those lead to bills, and bills must be paid. Your credit card statement will come once a month, your car lease so too, and mortgage payments will have to be made. While you try to do your duties, it may happen that you miss a payment here and there. And that’s normal because we all have lots to juggle and sometimes, it’s just too difficult to keep up with everything.
So what happens when a payment due, slips through the cracks of your hectic life, and gets reported as late to the bank and credit bureau on your credit report? The late-payment will eventually affect your credit score. If this happens once, twice, three times, your score will plummet. It’ll then be hard for you to get approved for new credit cards, get another mortgage, and so on.
At this point, you need credit repair. Late payments and other derogatory marks on your accounts can be disputed. That’ll get the negative marks off your report and put your account back in good standing, bringing your score up again.
Now, you can try and dispute all that on your own, figure out which letter to write, who to send it to, or which company to call. But, why not make the process smoother, simpler, and successful, by hiring a credit repair company to do the job for you? They have the system down pat and know which approach to take and exactly how to do so. They’ll deal with the legalities and bureaucracies just right.
Before you go ahead and make the call to just any credit repair company out there, do yourself a favor and do some cautious research. The risks are way too significant, and there are many, so you don’t want to work with just about any company.
What To Look Out For In A Credit Repair Company
It’s a smart move to hire a company to do your credit repair for you, so let’s go through the prerequisites which should be checked off as you settle on a company.
Firstly, get a time frame. Once the company has done it’s review of your credit report and they have an idea of what they’ll be working on, they should have an approximate time frame of how long the process will take. You want them to tell you what the estimated time frame is. There are a couple of safety factors included in why you must know.
There’s the idea of a deposit which you give before you start the credit repair job, to be returned to you if the results are unsuccessful. You don’t want the repair to drag over many months and when asking for your money back, to be told they’re still working on the repair. You want to be able to put your foot down after x amount of months, and say, this is taking way longer than the estimated time and I want my money back. They can’t work on disputes forever, so if it’s taking a suspiciously long amount of time, they may just be keeping your deposit for good. If you know what the norm is, you’ll know when to say stop, give my money back to me.
Regarding the time frame, disputes do take a couple of months. I’d say the average would be 4-8 months total. In contrast to what we’ve mentioned above, you don’t want the company giving you a time frame that’s too quick either. Disputes take time. If they say it’ll take very quick you can suspect something not so kosher is going on. Again, the average would be 4-8 months, unless they can specify exactly how it’s taking quicker.
This brings us to our next point, no secrets. A credit repair company should be willing and able to give you exact details of what’s being done on your report.
Two reasons. First being, not all derogatory marks were created equal. A very old late payment does not have the same effect on your score like a recent late payment has and the old one might not necessarily have to be removed. So what you want to make sure here is that the company will work on marks which must be taken off your report and not waste your money and time on marks that would be fine staying on your report.
Secondly, you want to know that nothing illegal is being done under your name. There are many sketchy tactics to try which can lead to more bad than good. You don’t want any of that happening under your name and especially not related to your credit, so you must make sure all actions taken on your behalf will be 100% legal.
That’s what should be going through your head as you settle on a company to clean up your credit report. Don’t settle for anything less than that. Not only do you deserve more, but it would be too risky to play around with this stuff.
Just like you handle your accounts and loans with care, you want the company you entrust your credit with to handle it in the same careful manner.
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