Me or the CR company?

[blake]

I need a little advice with this process! I just pulled all 3 reports and saw a lot more than expected. You know it's bad when you printer runs out of paper! I am debating whether to do this on my own or find a credit repair company to do it for me. These are my ?'s..

1. When disputing myself, can I do everything at once? IE: names, addys, public, lates, etc..

2. Has anyone had a positive experience with a CR company? The only one I noticed here was Lexington.

3. Do I use CM? I saw different answers.

4. Should I type all this up or hand write it? Does it even matter?

5. Is it worth it to just honestly have someone do it for me? I have been researching different companies and am having a hard time choosing one.
Some take a year and drag it out so it costs me more.

I really appreciate anyone's feedback!

[Trish]

Hi blake.... welcome to the forum

I will try to just answer your questions in the same order...

1. Yes, you can dispute ALL of your personal info at once (in one dispute letter). If you want to do it quickly, you can even call up the CRAs and dispute personal info that way. It usually gets updated faster and then you can move on to your credit acct disputes. That is the ONLY time I would use the phone for a dispute. Everything else should be in writing.

2. I have never used a CRO myself........and yes, there is quite a bit of info here on Lexington Law. Chane (the site owner) has had personal experience with them and even visited their headquarters. So you may want to ask him or see if he posts in here later.

3. For disputes, it's best to use CM. It gives you a paper trail and lets you see EXACTLY when the CRAs get your letters. For CAs/OCs - ALWAYS, ALWAYS send your letters CMRR.

4. Handwritten disputes are always preferable. If you can't do that then type them with purple or teal italic font. At the very least hand write the envelope. The reason for this is so the letters can't be scanned.....then they have to be re-routed and an actual human has to open and read it. It will just make your chances for a delete a little better.

5. IMHO, you can do it yourself just as well as any company can........if you have the time. There are plenty of resources on the web that can help you........and as long as you read up on the different laws pertaining to credit and educate yourself on how to go about repairing.......it's really pretty easy. If you choose to have a company do it for you........DO YOUR RESEARCH on the company. Don't blindly hand over money to just anyone. There are a lot of CROs that are scams.

Well, hope that helps.
Hopefully Chane will answer more questions for you about LL.

[fisher010978]

I have worked with a place called Correct Credit Solutions (Corporate office in Dallas). and had enormous results before I took on my own. Now if I could just get PRA to go away...

[chane]

I wouldn't dispute more than 5 or 6 items in one letter. If you have like 30 negative items on each report (I've seen reports with way more), don't dispute all 30 at once. Chances are it will be flagged as frivolous and sabotage any future correspondence with them. They do keep records of past disputes.

Most credit repair companies don't dispute more than 3-5 every 30 days. I believe they do it because they get better results by doing it that way. But, others will tell you it's to keep you in the program longer.

The truth is you will end up paying about $300-$700 or so, (depending on how bad it is). That may seem like a lot, but over a 30 year mortgage you will end up spending $100,000 more in interest then someone who does have good scores...and that's just on a mortgage and that's even if you get approved for a loan. Think about employment, cell phones, insurance rates, and everything else...it makes $700 look really small.

Bottom line: It's extremely important that you do it right. If you want to learn how to do this, you should. This kind of knowledge is priceless as a consumer. If not, hire Lexington Law. The worst thing you can do is half-ass it and mess it up so that it can't even be taken care of in the future.

Some people think "I will try it myself and if I don't succeed, then I will hire Lexington." WRONG. Lexington won't even accept you if you've already tried it yourself, because they know their efforts will be in vain. If you tried and you failed, then that's that. In my experiences, there are very few 2nd chances when it comes to credit repair.

[blake]

Have you been reading my report Chane? Hey thanks to everyone that replied back! Such great advice from each of you. I am really glad I found this forum. I think after reading this I am going to go with a CR company. I just have way too many to tackle and knowing me I will mess it even worse. Although I don't think that could be possible!

When I was calling around some limited the amount of deletions to 5 per month and some did them all at once and now I understand why! I also noticed of some of these companies pay you a referral fee and I like that providing it works for me. My only regret was not ordering a report with my ficos. I decided to go the free route and it did not include them. Does anyone know if it is necessary to get the "upgrades" when choosing a company?

Thanks again,
Blake

[chane]

As far as the upgrades, go with what you can afford. Go with Standard if you don't need the credit score monitoring. It's just FAKO scores anyway. If you want that, go with MyFICO or True Credit.