FTC and Credit Repair

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) protects consumers and has a great deal of helpful information about credit repair services. The FTC gets involved because shady fly-by-night credit repair companies have sullied the reputation of reputable, legitimate credit repair companies.

The FTC has put together a few guidelines on spotting a credit repair scam:

Credit repair is never quick

Any company making the claim that they can fix your credit overnight is being dishonest.

Unfortunately, the process of fixing bad credit is one of the most time consuming, frustrating tasks you will ever tackle. It can take months and even years for some people. (Personally, for us we had good credit again in the 700′s inside of 4 months with help from Lexington Law.)

You may need to make a combined effort of disputing negative listings AND negotiating with creditors to get your score back into the 700 range.

Do not pay large up front fees for credit repair

Is a credit repair company asking you for $2,000 up front? If so, it’s time to run the other way and don’t look back. A large fee like that up front is a red flag for a credit repair scam.

See the Credit Repair Organizations Act for the nitty gritty details of this law. This is a pretty straightforward rule and if you come across a company not abiding by it you should run from it. This is a major red flag that the company is not reputable.

It is illegal to create a new credit identity

Can’t you just start over? Yes! You can improve your credit score with a lot of work, time and maybe some help but it can be done.

What you can’t (legally) do is create a new identity or credit profile. This is illegal! Anyone telling you differently is not reputable and is encouraging you to break the law. A good credit repair service should get you out of hot water not into it!

Beware of misleading claims

Just a glance at some of these credit repair services websites sounds an alarm. The websites read just like a tacky, loud, gimmicky infomercial. “But wait! There’s more!”

This does not give anyone a good first impression. There is nothing professional about how these companies have chosen to represent themselves.

You may decide that having a credit repair expert on your side is the quickest and most trouble free way to dealing with bad credit. If you choose to hire a professional we suggest Lexington Law Firm.

We selected them for two reasons:
1. Lexington Law has a great track record with the BBB;
2. Lexington Law has REAL attorneys – they are not just selling a package of software.

* We were so impressed with Lexington Law that we decided to become a sponsor and put up this website.

How did we know we could trust Lexington Law? It was a good sign to see they even have the FTC guidelines disclosed on their website. A credit repair company that divulges their methods of compliance on their website is a great place to start your credit repair journey. Get a FREE credit consultation with credit repair experts by calling 1-800-298-4297

In another somewhat related story, we discovered that the city of Chicago charged nine different “credit repair companies” with fraud. You can check out the video here:

There is a common theme here with all these stories:

If you are looking for a credit repair company to help you with credit issues, you should avoid any company that charges a big up front fee.

This is the exact reason why we selected Lexington Law Firm to help us with our credit issues. There are no big up front fees and they have plans affordable for almost any budget. I liked that there is a small first work fee of $99, which is a bargain considering all they do for that small investment.

* We were so impressed with Lexington Law that we decided to become a sponsor and put up this website. Get a FREE credit consultation with credit repair experts by calling 1-800-298-4297

The other reason why we liked Lexington is simply because they offer a pay-as-you-go service. If you don’t like what they are doing, you simply cancel the service and move on.