Is credit report repair legitimate? Let me tell you: It depends who you go to! You can find illegitimate credit report repair. People who will do terrible things; will tell you to get a new identity, to hide, to not pay your bills, to get a tax identity number, and so forth – use it as a social security number – you’ll go to jail, so don’t do that. There are hundreds of ways that people can be guided wrongly. That’s not the kind of advice you’ll get when you go to a law firm.
The Fair Credit Reporting Act, The Fair Credit Billing Act, The Fair Debt Collections Practices Act, The Truth in Lending Act – These exist for a reason. These aren’t just words in a book somewhere. All of the federal statutes can be brought to bare, to help you, and me, and anyone else, improve their credit rating, so their lives can be better.
Here’s how the consumer credit game works. There are three consumer reporting agencies: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. But guess what? They’re not official. The government didn’t “bless” them. These are for-profit, privately owned… I think one of them, if not two, are publicly traded. Even they’re owned by their stockholders. These are companies that buy and sell our information for profit. And the only laws that are applicable to these agencies – so called – are laws that protect consumers. Those are our consumer protection statues. And they work to place limits on the credit bureaus.
So, for example, the next time a creditor tells you, “I’m sorry, we can’t take that off your report. It has to stay their for seven years, by law.” They’re either terribly misinformed, or they’re lying. Because the Fair Credit Reporting Act places limits on the amount of time something must be report, but it doesn’t stipulate that something must be reported. At all.
You know, any of us could start our own credit bureau tomorrow, and try to collect information on our neighbors, and try to sell it to our other neighbors. And that’s legal. But, there are consumer protections statues that place limits on that kind of activity. The thing you need to know, and speaking as a psychologist, I can tell you: The essence of depression is believing, the way things have been, always will be. People who are depressed always believe that there’s just no way out – nothing will change, they’re doomed.
That’s not true, number one, generally in life. But it’s certainly not true when it comes to your credit rating, for goodness sakes.
Tags: credit bureaus, Credit repair, credit repair scams, lexington law, psychdoc, psychology