When it comes to Credit Repair, it’s Buyer Beware
I know from talking with hundreds of clients every day, that when it comes to making a decision about which credit repair company to go with, most base their decision purely on cost. If you are serious about repairing your credit in an effective and timely manner, this is the biggest mistake you can make.
Most people don’t realize that all those credit repair companies that charge on a monthly service fee basis are only going to do a very small amount of work each month. This method of billing grants virtually anyone to start and represent themselves as a credit repair expert, and not have any responsibility to produce results. If you’re like the average person, you most likely have an average of 4-12 negative items on each of your credit reports. If you are only paying $39 - $79 for a monthly service fee, the credit repair company is only going to work on a couple items at a time. Keep in mind also that with the monthly service fee model, the credit repair company is actually incentivized to take as long as possible to clean up your credit. You might easily end up paying far more, with fewer deletions, than you would have with a easy flat-rate credit repair program.
With a flat-rate credit repair payment model, the motivation is to get your credit cleaned up as swiftly as possible, and isn’t that exactly what most people want? In years in the industry, I have never come across a client who wanted to clean up their credit slowly. Excercise caution when choosing a credit repair company, as they’re totally not all created equally? The first thing you should do is call and see what kind of service you receive before you pay them anything. Are they willing to speak to you about your credit and their program, or do that simply push you into enrollment? You should also check out their record of complaints. If the company has been in business for more than a few years and has not been providing a acceptable service, you’ll read about it on the World wide web. Just go to Google and type in “[company name] complaints”.
Consumers have been warned by The Federal Trade Commission to stay away from credit repair companies, and not to work with any company who charges an up-front fee. The reason for this is that they are tired of getting complaints about credit repair companies that take money and not perform any work. Since the FTC cannot advocate any particular company, their policy is to simply tell everyone to stay away. Many companies have since adopted the model of charging a monthly service fee instead of charging for the credit repair itself. They’ve found it to be easy money, as most clients will sign up for this type of service and forget about it; leaving the credit repair company to continue receiving payments for a long period of time with no obligation of work.
Several times a week we receive calls from people who have been client’s with a monthly service fee credit repair program. They are very unhappy and have paid in, in come cases, well over a thousand dollars, and often have only seen a handfull of deletions. I personally find this appalling, and you should also.
I hope this information has been useful.