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Be Wary of Credit Card Offers that Seem too Good to be True

With the advent of the Internet, the client base for would-be scam artists has increased tenfold. There are identity theft scam artists, credit card scam artists and banking information hackers to cite a few examples. However, one of the most disconcerting of these new wave scammers is the ‘credit repair companies.

By offering false hope of a clear credit history in as little as 48 hours, these companies prey on the vulnerable who are looking for a quick fix to their credit woes. Unfortunately, if you have a bad credit rating, there are no overnight cures. However, don't let that discourage you because there are ways to overcome your financial difficulties.

There are also many legitimate companies that can help you to restore your tarnished credit rating. Unfortunately, there are probably more illegitimate companies that are just looking to take your hard earned money, without providing the results that you were originally promised.

Twenty years ago, these so-called credit repair companies were not nearly as visible as they are now. The World Wide Web has spawned a whole new field of legitimate credit companies as well as many illegal, thieving credit companies.

It is very important to become educated in the field before putting your entire credit rating into someone else's hands. Another important factor to take under advisement is whether or not you can repair your credit on your own, without the help of a credit repair company.

With only a few minutes of simple research, most anyone can figure out that repairing a tarnished credit history is not a simple task. Neither is it something that can be accomplished overnight.

A simple review of the policies of The Fair Credit Reporting Act will quickly show you that there are in fact very few things that you can do to improve your credit rating. And any company that tells you otherwise is most likely trying to get into your wallet.

One of the most common ways to improve your credit rating is to get a copy of your credit report. Typically, these reports are filled with errors. But you know your financial history better than anyone that you could hire, so you are fully able to look at the report and decide what is incorrect better than they could in the first place. Many of these companies claim that they can remove factual information from your credit report.

This is simply false. Any information that has been proven to be correct will stay on your credit report for seven years. If you have declared bankruptcy in the past, then this information will remain for 10 years. There is no organization that can successfully remove accurate information from any credit report. Any company that states that they can should immediately be disregarded as a scam operation.

The method that these companies use is to dispute every single item in a credit report, whether it is factual or not. Sometimes, this will result in the item being removed from the file. However, this is almost always temporary because anything that is factual is impossible to permanently be removed from a credit report. Once the claim is properly investigated, it will be added back to the report.

The only way to repair a credit report is if there are actual legitimate errors on the report. Nothing that is factual and has been proven will ever be permanently removed from anyone's credit file. In order to find out if there is misinformation on your credit report, you certainly do not need to enlist the help of an outside agency. Every citizen is entitled to a copy of their credit report.

Upon receiving your report, examine it carefully. Ensure that each item on the report is actually true, and if it is not, gather the evidence to prove that they are in the wrong. For example, if your credit report states that you have been delinquent on paying your credit card bills when in fact you are not; simply prove to the credit agency that they are in the wrong. They are then legally obligated to correct the information. They are also obligated to send the new, updated credit report to anyone who has asked for your credit information in the past six months.

The credit bureaus have 30 days to investigate a false statement on your credit report. And if your evidence proves that there has been an error, it will immediately be rectified. 

Another quick fix that many illegitimate companies use to persuade those with bad credit can actually make their credit situation much worse.

Basically, what they offer is the ability to create an entirely new credit file. This ploy tells the customer to apply for an Internal Revenue Service ‘Employer Identification Number,' which has the same amount of digits as a Social Security Number.

They are then informed that if they use the EIN number in place of their SSN number on credit applications, the new number won't be linked back to their back credit discrepancies. Therefore, they are told, the old information won't appear on a routine credit check.

Not only is this illegal and can land you in a world of legal trouble, no credit is almost as bad as bad credit. Therefore this method is not only pointless, but incredibly risky. 

There are ways in which you can repair a tarnished credit history. A pre-paid credit card is one method. Ensuring that your bills are always paid on time is another great way to improve your credit rating. Consolidating your past debts and ensuring that your payments are always prompt is perhaps the best way. None of these ways are easy and none of them will happen overnight.

Your credit rating depends on you. And unfortunately, there are no quick fixes and do not place any trust in anyone that says that your credit rating can be restored with little to no effort.

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