If you ever got in trouble and had to go to court, technically you could represent yourself.  But doing so is such a bad idea that our courts will actually appoint a free attorney for you if you are unable to afford one – it’s THAT important to have professional help.  Well, this is another one of those times when it really makes sense to hire professional help so that you’ll get the best result.  Here’s why:

If you need to return an item to a supermarket, chances are that you’ll get some type of refund no matter what – all you have to do is ask.  The supermarket wants you to be happy so that you don’t go shop somewhere else.  That’s not how it works with the credit bureaus at all – they know that you can’t simply get upset and take your credit to someone else.  In fact, it’s not in their best interest to be easy to contact and deal with – they could go out of business if they were!  If it were easy to contact the credit bureaus and have them delete something, then the data they sell wouldn’t be so valuable – and they would probably be out of business.  Also, they get paid when they’re collecting information (they charge creditors a fee every time something is reported), and they get paid when they sell it (they sell credit reports, etc).  So the credit bureaus are getting paid coming and going…but the law says they aren’t allowed to charge for reinvestigation of consumer disputes.  So the credit bureaus are purposely difficult to deal with because it’s not in their best interest to provide “good customer service” to consumers, and because disputes cost them a lot of money to handle.