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Free Credit Repair

By: EconomyWatch Date: 25 August 2009

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A poor credit rating may jeopardize your chances of getting loans, low interest rates, mortgages, rent and even employment. You can save yourself all this inconvenience and embarrassment by repairing your credit rating. Credit repair describes a systematic process of rehabilitating your creditworthiness or financial credit reputation. To improve your credit rating, you can either conduct a free credit repair or hire a professional company to do it for a fee.

Credit Repair Companies: Pros and Cons

People opt for credit repair companies to improve their credit rating as:

There is increasing focus on improving credit scores
There is a lack of understanding of the credit repair process
People find it time consuming
Attractive claims are made by the repair companies

However, not all credit repair service providers are ethical and reputed companies. The Internet is full of thousands of companies that claim to erase your bad credit history. These credit repair services are scams as:

It is impossible to erase your verifiable financial and banking records
The alternative method of creating a new credit identify is considered a fraud in the eyes of the law

Moreover, credit repair companies charge high fees.

Free Credit Repair: Steps

Free credit repair is possible if you undertake the credit repair process yourself. All you need is the knowledge of the whole process. Following are the steps involved:

Obtaining your credit report: You can obtain a free report once a year by sending a request to your company’s main credit reporting agencies (CRAs). You can receive extra copies during the year by paying a charge.
Scrutinizing the report: Scrutinize the entire report in detail. The report might contain details about bank accounts that do not belong to you. Make a note of all such instances where the details are incorrect.
Disputing: This step involves sending detailed letters to the relevant CRAs, informing them about the incorrect entries in the report. Attach a copy of the necessary documents that support your claim. For your help, free formats of such letters are available on the Internet.

You will receive response from your CRA within 30 days on the status of your disputed item. The CRAs are then obligated to send you your updated credit report.