Do Credit Repair Companies & Debt Consolidation Really Help?

You can find ads everywhere selling systems, programs and ways to help you fix your credit in a hurry. Most of these ads seem to enjoy leading with such ludicrous statements like “My credit score jumped 300 points in only 3 hours” or “Smash your debt with only 2 letters” or even “Create a new credit file in only a couple of hours”. It makes you wonder if any of these claims are too good to be true. Well let me say that the answer is both true and false that ALL of these letters seem too good to true.

While many people tend to think that the only thing that can actually fix credit is time, in reality, there are a ton of things out there that can help you to repair your credit score yourself. Time is only one piece in the big puzzle that is credit score repair today. Many different tips and techniques can be applied and all that is required from someone is a little education to fix a credit score or simply raise it to where you want it to be.

Even the Federal Trade Commission states that “anything a credit repair clinic can do for you legally, you can do for yourself at little or no cost”. The key element to anyone’s success seems to be knowing the latest inside techniques and procedures that these credit repair companies use. These involve strategies that have been used for years by credit repair agencies and bureaus to fix consumers credit. Strategies that have become known by names like “Proof of Contract”, “Challenge of Procedure” or “Constructive Notice” are just a few, there are many others.

Even though these terms may sound impressive to the layperson, they are nothing but simple really. What it all boils down to is nothing more than a method of communication that exercises your consumer protection rights and helps consumers to get the results they want. The Federal Trade Commission along with the Credit Rules and Acts set forth by our government are written to aid the consumer and are “pro-consumer” or written for the average person not the Credit Reporting Agencies. Really the rules and acts were written to “Protect” the consumer from these agencies and any unfair practices used by them.

While many people would love to keep you believing that time is the only thing to change your credit score, it is good that obviously you have proved, by reading this article, that you want more information and are willing to educate yourself and fix your own credit score now. Even though the “actual work” for fixing your credit report will take very little of your time, it is vitally important that the information that you use and arm yourself with is good and how you go about it is using the correct techniques.

9 out of 10 courses on restoring your credit will do nothing but lead you into the bureaus snake pit. Once there, it is hard to get out or help yourself at all. Understanding that the Fair Credit Reporting Act, a consumer protection law, which states that “the only negative information which can remain on your credit report is not what is accurate, but what can be PROVED as such” is the first step to understanding what these credit repair companies don’t want you to know.

This is the tool and technique that the 9 out of 10 books will try to help you use, by sending out letters and communication, to try and remove your negative items and improve your score. Under the guidelines of the FCRA, it is definetely hard for these credit bureaus to Prove something as accurate. This works very well for consumers when fixing their scores, but lures people to these self-help books claiming to fix your credit fast, without any real meaningful data. There are books and programs out there that can help you, just make sure you don’t go out and buy the first “cheap” one out there just to find out the information is outdated and never really worked for anyone.

When using one of these credit repair schemes from the wrong book, consumers tend to use the outdated “boiler-plate” dispute letters to help with removing negative items. These letters tend to be outdated and are rarely effective. Nothing more than form letters, these techniques quite frankly may give the credit bureaus and creditors a good laugh at your attempts. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are definetely programs out there which can help the average layperson to fix their own credit and do it the right way. These programs are harder to find, but the good news is that it is for a reason.

The good credit report programs that help you to do-it-yourself are out there, they are just not as cheesy and cheap as the others. If you can find a good program for around $10 on how to fix your own credit, it is no wonder that it is only $10.

Anything that is going to really help you would be worth it and show testimonials from happy customers, have been around for a long time and prove with the information it provides in the sales form, that it is different from the rest and contains some actual knowledge. A good credit report repair program will also offer a money back guarantee and support information as well.