credit repair

Credit Repair
By Mark Woodcock

Many credit repair companies will charge you hundreds of dollars to clean up your tarnished credit report, so why not do it yourself? By doing your homework and choosing wisely, you could find a credit repair company that will do a good job for a reasonable fee. Below are a few tips to follow for those who want to repair their poor credit histories on their own:

1 Start by getting a copy of your credit report from all of the three major credit bureaus namely; Equifax, Trans Union and Experian. All of these can be found listed in the yellow pages. Contact each of the bureaus and request a copy of your credit report, you will have to pay a small fee for each copy.

2 On the reverse of these reports should be a list of the codes that are used within the file. Carefully study these codes so that you will be able to concentrate on the most important accounts while your are performing your credit repair process.

3 You should pick off any charge offs that show on your report. Charge offs are when the creditor has given up on trying to collect the debt and therefore have written it off as a loss. You cannot repair your credit without successfully getting these removed from your credit reports.

4 If charge offs show on your report, contact each creditor and ask for re-instatement. You will need to let them know that the problem has been fixed and your can now pay off the balance, in most cases the creditor will know that you are trying to repair your credit and will go along with you. If they agree to re-open the account and receive your first agreed payment you credit report will look better because all of your accounts will show as open.

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If you cannot get a charge off re-opened, contact the creditor again and ask them for a settlement account. In most cases, because the debt has already been wrote off, the creditor may accept for 50% payment of the amount due as a settlement. If they agree, when they receive the payment from you, the account status should be changed to closed. Always get this agreement in writing from the creditor before sending any funds.

6 Next thing to search for on your report if late payment entries. These are usually easy to clear up, just contact the creditors, explain the difficulty you had in making your payments on time, convince them that the problem is now fixed and make sure your payments are on time from now on. Most creditors will agree to remove the late payment entries providing you have made the timely payments for a period of time.

7 Any judgments are the next to be removed. These normally need to be paid in full so you will need to contact the lender and make the necessary arrangements to pay off the amount due with an agreement, always in writing, that the judgement will be removed and the account reported as closed after full payment is made.

Credit repair is not difficult, it just takes a little research and a bit of persuasion, don’t let the credit repair companies take advantage of you.

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