The Boring Truth About Credit Repair Companies

The credit repair industry exists because credit reports contain errors and people find those errors intimidating to fix. Most credit repair companies charge hundreds or thousands to do what a consumer can do in an afternoon for free.



The basic dispute process is simple. Pull your credit reports from AnnualCreditReport.com, which is free. Read each report carefully. Identify any errors. For each error, file a dispute directly with the reporting bureau. Each bureau has an online dispute form.



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The bureau then has thirty days to investigate. If they cannot verify the disputed item, they must remove it. This is not a mystery process. It is a defined federal right under the Fair Credit Reporting Act.



Credit repair companies mostly file these same disputes on your behalf, often on standardized forms, sometimes disputing legitimate items in hopes of removal by procedural failure.



A better use of the money is subscribing to a credit monitoring service for a few dollars a month, or using free tools like Credit Karma.