Q. What will happen with my credit score?
A. We cannot guarantee a credit score or a specific result from our program. On average, our clients enjoy a credit score increase of 60-190 points!
Q. Is there something I can do to help the program work better?
A. Yes – credit repair involves a certain amount of teamwork! While you are in credit repair, we ask that you refrain from applying for new credit, continue to pay your bills on time, and be sure to carefully follow the instructions in our agreement and welcome letter (which is supplied when you enroll).
Q. I tried contacting the credit bureaus to dispute something myself. Why are they so difficult to contact and to deal with?
A. They have to be difficult for consumers to deal with or else their data wouldn’t be as valuable – so they wouldn’t be able to sell it in the form of credit reports, marketing lists, etc. Let’s say that I call up one of the bureaus and am able to reach someone right away, who immediately updates my auto loan to reflect that a late payment was actually paid on-time just because I said that it was never paid late, then apologizes for their “mistake” and invites me to call back anytime if I need anything else. If correcting issues with credit was this easy, the bureaus would probably be out of business. Also, the law does not allow them to charge a consumer for handling disputed items, so it costs the credit bureaus a lot of money to reinvestigate information that is disputed.
Q. Should I pay a bill or will it just go away using your service?
A. If you owe money on a bill, we can’t make it so that you don’t owe the money – but we can probably make it so that the bill no longer shows on your credit report. Paying off a bill helps in two ways. First, it takes the fight out of a creditor – they don’t care about you so much because you don’t owe them money – which increases our odds of getting it removed from your credit. Second – paying a creditor prevents them from taking further action against you, such as selling the debt to another creditor or taking you to court. We always recommend that you pay all of your bills if possible!
Q. I paid off a bill that still shows on my credit as having an open balance due.
A. Most people don’t realize that the credit bureaus charge a fee to creditors whenever they report something (such as when a payment is made). Once you pay a creditor (especially collection accounts), they no longer care about you since you don’t owe them money any longer. We frequently help clients who have open accounts on their credit that they do not owe money on – usually it’s obvious because the creditor just stopped reporting once they were paid.
Q. Why does my credit show duplicate accounts from the same item?
A. Often a company will try to collect on a debt for a certain period, and then give up. They cut their losses by selling the debt to the next collection company. Often, the previous company (sometimes multiple companies) will still appear on the person’s credit report because the company stopped reporting (see the above question/answer).
Q. I paid off a creditor, and they reported my bill as having been paid. Shouldn’t it be completely removed from my credit report?
A. Usually not. Most credit is supposed to remain on your report for up to seven years (some things stay on for ten). However, often we are able to remove negative items because the credit bureaus are unable to verify them properly or within the thirty day guideline as allowed by law. To put it into very simple terms, the credit bureaus must fully prove that their information is correct or they must delete it. Our program employs powerful strategies and uses specific sections of the law to achieve results!
Q. Once deleted, can information re-appear on my credit.
A. It’s not supposed to, but that does happen occasionally. For deleted items that are less than a year old, there is a 10-20% chance that it may come back at some date. For deleted items that are 1-2 years old, there is a 0-10% chance, and for items that are over 2 years old there is only a 2% chance. If an item does re-appear, we will dispute it again with the advantage of being able to show that it was previously deleted. |
