Writing Credit Repair Letters On Your Own Will Get You On The Right Path To The Loan You Need
July 10th, 2010There is plenty of information online about credit repair. the vast majority of it is steering consumers toward pricey credit repair clinics and lawyers who will charge you large fees for repairing credit. Of course this is not shocking. The internet is the most significant market place ever born. But it is also the most difficult to search and it is even harder to know who to trust on the web. The only person you know you can trust is yourself! So, when it comes to repairing your credit, you should look to yourself first before you pay hundreds, if not thousands, to a credit repair company or a credit repair lawyer.
If you search “self credit repair” on Google, the first link you will find (below the comercial ones who spent thousands to get in the yellow box) is one to the FTC. You should review that information. It is vitally important and should persuade you that fixing your credit on your own is the wisest starting point. I know from experience with clients who have done credit repair by themselves that it will also probably be the place that you will stop too. Your success doing it on your own will probably be sufficient for your needs. The FTC website gives an sample of a good dispute letter. You could easily use it. You would just have to cut and paste it into WORD and fill in all the necessary information to generate your letters.
Filling in all the data from the accounts you wish to dispute is the tedious part of the process. You will need to commit several hours depending onhow many items you want to dispute. This is the task where most people become discouraged and turn to a credit repair company. How do you know if you are filling it in correctly? How do you know where to send the letters? How do you know what to include with the letters? Why are you sending other things with the letters? What are you supposed to dispute? What should you not dispute? It gets hairy.
Usually, if you are interested in repairing your credit it is because you were turned down for a a credit card, a mortgage, or car loan. My advice is that you should visit with the person who denied you. Ask them what you should do? Talk to them about your credit report. Visit with them and go over everything on your report. Ask them if they could assist you with repairing your credit? Most likely your loan officer is familiar with these kinds of things. They deal with credit reports all the time. They know why people have the score they have. You can go over every item with your loan officer and figure out what is accurate and inaccurate. Then you can utilize the letter provided by the FTC and dispute those items .
This is not difficult, but unfortunately, credit repair companies would have you believe that it is because they want you to spend several hundred dollars with them. Of course, they can create the credit repair letters much more efficiently than you because they have entire departments whose job is to do just that.
Since this is a subject that attracts my interest, I spend time searching different credit repair websites and videos. I am not against people earning a paycheck, but I am absolutely opposed to people charging huge fees for really simple services. They offer free analysis, but your loan officer could do that for free too. I also understand the consumer’s situation. There is plenty that is not understood about the process and it is hard to tell how it can best be done. It is difficult. The fact is that most people could to it on their own if they had the tools and a few hours to read the manual. But even with the manual there is the concern that you might do something wrong. So it would seem that some manner of help is going to be best in the field of credit repair. That’s why I advise you to speak with your loan officer.
Besides credit repair companies, I have seen “credit repair software” that goes for $249. I watched some demo videos and trust me, you would be better going with a credit repair company. The length of time it will take you to puzzle out the software is insane and you then have to undertake all the data entry for every account you wish to dispute.
My conclusion is that you should write the credit repair letters on your own because companies and software are a waste of money. You should be able to find good info on the internet for free or it is entirely possible that your loan officer could help you through the process so that you don’t mess anything up.