“Get a better credit score in just a few days!” You might have heard such claims, you might have not. There are dozens of different credit counseling agencies and credit repair agencies out there. Some you can trust, some you cannot. Still, you may be wondering how to improve bad credit if not with a credit repair agency. You still can, you simply have to be very careful of who you choose to do business with. Improving credit history is not a feat that can be achieved in a few days, a few weeks, even a few years, depending upon how bad your credit history really is. It takes a lot of time, patience, and careful work. There are at least two big myths surrounding agencies and what they claim they can do with your credit report in regards to making it better. The truth is that you are really the only one that can make your credit report better. You can always visit a legitimate credit counseling agency, and they may work with creditors to help lower payments or rates, but they do not touch your current credit report. They may rework your budget to help you manage your money better, but as for improving credit history, you will simply have to wait until all your new, good credit history pushes out all the bad. Fable #1 – We Fix Your Credit Score
This is simply not true. Why, you ask? Because no one can just access your credit report and start deleting all your bad credit history. Okay, maybe a hacker could, but the agencies aren’t going to start hiring hackers to do illegal things when they make plenty of money off of gullible people who believe them in the first place. These places do not do anything at all to improve your credit report – they can’t. The Fair Credit Reporting Act prevents certain parties from ever seeing your credit report and it also allows for who can and who cannot make changes to your credit report. Yes, if you find an error in your report, you must inform the credit bureaus and they will make the change themselves, but no company is going to have the ability to go in and make changes. Then how are these companies able to claim they fix your credit report? Well, they do use some action. However, it is something you could easily do as well. Basically, they file disputes over each negative aspect of your credit report – just like you would do if you found an error in your report. But if you have bad credit and you know it, as you also know it is your own fault, chances are none of the disputes will go anywhere because they are all legitimate. Sometimes actual problematic information can get removed, which is good, and sometimes non-problematic information can get removed as well, which seems like a good thing because that means less bad credit information on your report. But once the bureau has done investigating, they will know which is right and which is wrong, so that last bit will more than likely wind back up on your report. So you have just paid a ton of money in fees to some lazy, useless credit agency for them to do practically nothing, resulting in maybe one negative item removed from your credit report. All that money spent on them could have been better used to pay off debts on credit cards or maybe working with a legitimate credit counseling agency to help revamp your spending habits and credit card usage. Fable #2 – Make an Entirely New Credit Score
If you want to go from bad credit score to good credit score, all you have to do is start an entirely new credit history. Or so they say. How do false companies suggest you do this? You write to the Internal Revenue Service and ask for an Employer Identification Number and use the same number of digits as a Social Security Number. Then you can use that number instead of your actual Social Security Number when you apply for credit. One word of advice; do not do this.
Not only are you lying in order to apply for credit with bad credit, but because you are lying about your Social Security Number, that means you are committing a federal crime and could end up in jail for doing so. Besides, suddenly popping up in credit bureaus with no credit history whatsoever raises eyebrows and you would get caught pretty quickly.
In the long run, you are the one in charge of improving your credit report. You got it to the point it is now in, so it will be up to you to pull it out of the mud and create a new credit history. Eventually all the negative information will get pushed out and you will be left with a nice, clean, good credit history. From there, you can easily apply for credit and stand a greater chance at getting the percentage rates, limits, and even rewards that you want. You will need patience as it may take time depending upon how bad your credit is (if you have filed for bankruptcy, it could remain on your credit report for several years), but if you prove to creditors and banks that you understand your mistakes of the past and are doing all you can to fix your credit history, you can be well on your way to obtaining more important financial transactions such as mortgages for housing and leases for cars.
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