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Credit Repair
Services Are A Scam!
 Even
though there are hundreds of companies advertising that they can repair your
credit rating by removing negative information from your credit reports, the
Federal Trade Commission says that every one of them is a scam: Credit
repair services charge you to "remove mistakes from your credit
report". Worse yet, they require payment first, so you pay them money even
if they fail to fix a mistake. In some cases, you pay them even if they can't find
any mistakes.
Credit
repair companies may not break any laws, but they don't anything you can't do
yourself. You
can fix credit bureau mistakes yourself for free. If you've found a
mistake on your credit report, call the credit bureau and ask them how to
contest the information. They're required by federal law to explain the
procedure to you.
File
Segregation Is Illegal
On the other hand, some credit
repair services go one step farther and claim they can erase anything off your
record.
There
is no legal way to remove truthful information from your credit report.
Half of these credit repair
companies take your money and run. The other half tell you to how to create a
false (and illegal) tax identity. If you follow the advice of the file
segregationists, you'll be creating a fraudulent tax identity. That's a federal
crime.
File segregation companies are
criminals stealing money from you. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has closed
down dozens of these criminal
credit repair organizations. If you fall for the file segregation scam, you
could end up in debt and in prison!
Identity
Theft Is The Crime Of The Future
A few fly-by-night credit
repair agencies force you to reveal important personal information (like bank
account numbers and your mother's maiden name), then use that name to steal
your identity, opening credit card and checking accounts under your name,
then running up bills they don't intend to pay. These extra debts will damage
your credit rating even more, and maybe even get you in legal trouble for
passing bad checks!
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