Why It Takes Time To Repair Your Credit Score

Is your credit score not where you need it to be? Fast credit repair! Quick credit repair! Instant credit repair! You hear or see these types of advertisements all the time and you might feel tempted to bite on these claims. The problem is that credit repair is a process that is not accomplished over night, so the plain truth is you are not going to see this type of speedy result when you begin the credit repair process.

Credit scores are calculated from the information contained in your credit report. In order to see the biggest rise in your score, you need to repair the data contained in your report.

The Credit Repair Process                                                                     

No matter who undertakes credit repair, you or a professional organization, there is a minimum time frame required to accomplish the job. The steps in the credit repair process are heavily regulated under federal law and timetables are spelled out in these laws.

1. Get a copy of your credit report. You can’t know what needs to be fixed if you don’t have a copy of your credit report. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), you are entitled to one free credit report per year from every credit bureau. Most lenders only consider reports from Experian, Equifax and TransUnion, and the place to get all three is annualcreditreport.com.

Time to do this if you were doing it yourself: about 30 minutes. If you hire a professional repair company like Creditrepair.com, they pull your credit report for you instantly.

2. Review your credit report. Once your credit report is obtained, problem areas need to be pinpointed. It helps to print out copies and highlight any items that are negative. Usually credit reports are divided into sections. You want to pay attention to public records, collections and account history. All public records and collections are bad, and there is specific negative information to look for in your account history.

If your account history is not divided into good and bad sections (as is the case with some credit reports), look for the following pieces of information included as the descriptions for each individual account. Late pays (30, 60, 90, 120, 150, 180 days), “Account settled for less than owed”, “Current was 30 (or 60 or 90, etc.) days late” or “Charge Off” are all indications of negative accounts.

Time to review your credit reports yourself: about 1-3 hours. Creditrepair.com will give your copies of your credit report with all the negative items identified.

3. Identify mistakes or other items that aren’t right. For each of the negative items, ask yourself, “is the information correct?” (To do this, you might need to review your records.) Can you show a complete payment history on each account through bank statements? If it isn’t correct, or if you feel that there were extenuating circumstances which would mitigate the negative aspects of the listing (for instance, the account was the responsibility of an ex-spouse), this account might be ripe for dispute with the credit bureau, which is your right under the FCRA.

Time: 1-2 hours, depending on the depth of the document search you undertake. Creditrepair.com will work with you to identify any mistakes or any situations, which can be explained in your favor to be removed.

4. Write a dispute letter. A dispute letter is as simple as saying information on your credit report is wrong and specifically identifies what is wrong with it. You must clearly identify which account in your credit report is incorrect and request that the disputed information be corrected.

Under the FCRA, if the negative information cannot be verified within 30 days, the information must be removed from your credit report. Make sure you include any documentation you feel vindicates your assertions.

Time to write each letter, post it, and make copies: 30 minutes. Creditrepair.com will write all of your letters for you.

5. Write a “goodwill” letter. Appealing to a creditor’s sense of fair play actually works. The purpose of a goodwill letter is to repair your credit and return a late account to good standing by having a lender or servicer erase lateness on your credit report. You write directly to your financial institution instead of the credit bureaus.

Some tips when writing a goodwill letter:

• It helps to show that you are appreciative.
• Point out that you’ve always been a good customer and the lateness was limited to one short time period.
• Take responsibility for your actions. If you were in the wrong, say so.
• Be short and to the point.
• Ask for a goodwill “adjustment”. Some creditors will tell you removal is illegal, but if you ask for an adjustment, you may accomplish the same thing.

Time it takes to write a goodwill letter and mail it: 30 minutes. In the normal course of customer service business, if the bank is going to respond, expect this to take several weeks before you receive results. Creditrepair.com takes advantage of its good relationships with creditors to write the best goodwill letters for you.

6. Wait for the results of your dispute or goodwill letters.   As previously stated, the FCRA has 30 days to investigate your claim and make the adjustments to your credit report. With regards to a goodwill letter, a financial institution is under no legal requirement to respond to your goodwill letter, a response can take 30-45 days.

7. Didn’t get the results you were looking for? Under the FCRA, you have the right to request a reinvestigation. However, the credit bureau has the right to disregard your request if it deems the request as frivolous (meaning you are saying the same thing in your reinvestigation request as the original dispute reason and/or did not provide new documentation). The credit bureau then has an additional 30 days to process your reinvestigation.

Time it takes to request a reinvestigation: letter writing time + mailing time + plus 30 days.   Creditrepair.com takes care of all reinvestigation requests using its expertise to make sure reinvestigations are not deemed “frivolous”.

Other Methods to Raise Your Credit Score

Besides going all out and attacking the information on your credit report, there are some other things you can do to raise your credit score.

1. Pay down your credit cards. For fast “credit repair”, you can positively impact your credit score by paying down your credit cards. Once you pay down your balances below 30% of the credit limit you can see a rise of up to 100 points! The amount of your available credit that you’ve used is 30% of your credit score, so this can have an almost immediate effect.

Time it takes to have effect on your credit score: typically, credit card companies report the balances once a month, so the report of your lower balances to the credit bureaus can take up to 30 days, if you just miss the date on the reporting cycle.

2. Pay your bills on time from now on. The older your negative items become, the less impact they have on your credit score, so pad those negative items with recent positive credit.

Time it takes for old bad credit to lessen its effect on your credit: about 24 months.

Is Fast Credit Repair a Myth?

As you can see, the there is no such thing as quick credit repair and certainly no such thing as instant credit repair. If you do it yourself, the credit repair process can take months. If you hire a credit repair company, they are subject to the same laws as consumers, but the process will be faster with a professional credit repair organization, as the right letters for credit disputes for disputing negative information are written by the experts who know the best legal angles and have established relationships with the credit bureaus and financial institutions.