The Top 5 Legitimate Credit Repair Companies Ranked

The Top 5 Legitimate Credit Repair Companies Ranked

It is always a good idea to go with one of the top credit repair companies to ensure that you get legitimate credit repair services at a fair price. To make finding these easier, we have ranked and considered the top five credit repair companies for 2019 here for you next. All of them are well-respected and –regarded in the industry and by their existing and past customers.

1. Lexington Law

Lexington Law is something like the gold standard of traditional credit repair companies. This stems from its long years of proven and vast customer experience in the field that date back to more than 25 years. This group also gets major points for being a law firm that specializes exclusively in credit repair.

They have the largest number of successful results and clients to share, with more than nine million derogatory items taken off from client credit reports in the year 2016 alone. 

The company has assisted over half a million clients with credit repair since 2004. We love that Lexington provides three tiers of service, specializing in the Premier Plus program that offers a broad variety of features including providing personal finance tools and tracking your FICO score. You can cancel at any time with Lexington Law. 

2. Sky Blue Credit Repair 

A close second to Lexington in many rankings of credit repair firms is Sky Blue Credit Repair. They have been helping clients since 1989 and offer a free consultation. Their simplicity is among the most appealing features of this firm. Sky Blue offers their famous flat rate payment plan that sets a fixed price for an individual or a couple. 

Credit repair is the only service which they offer, making them extremely laser focused on this work. Sky Blue offers 15 items disputed per month and allows you to easily track your credit repair progress online 24 hours per day, seven days per week. With a full 90 day complete money back guarantee, you really have nothing to lose using Sky Blue (except your negative credit report items). The company boasts fast results for most clients appearing in only 30 days. 

You can get started with a very reasonable $79 and may cancel or even pause your membership at any point in the process.

3. The Credit Saint

The Credit Saint is more than just a cool sounding company name. They deliver credit reports from each of the big three consumer reporting bureaus at the conclusion of a billing cycle so that you can literally see the progress of their ongoing credit repair. With three different tiers of service, Credit Saint provides its 90 day, 100 percent money back guarantee for all clients. 

Their one time fee is $99 but they offer monthly fees starting at under $80 and no contract to sign.

The firm has been around for 15 years and has demonstrated its penchant for online transparency, an easy to follow credit repair process, and extremely competitive services and prices in this time. Their wealth of information available to all on the company website ensures that you are able to fully investigate all that they offer before committing to become a client. Their website might be the easiest to navigate of all the top five credit repair companies. 

With a simple click, prospective customers are able to view the details of all three of the company credit repair plans, including what each provides and what it costs. You can have their help for as little as less than $60 per month, making them among the most affordable of the best-rated credit restoration firms. 

4. The Credit Pros

The Credit Pros use an intuitive system of payment that provides their clients with the ability to attack individual derogatory credit items. They also give you the choice to go with a more traditional payment plan per month, which usually amounts to a less expensive option in the long run. In this monthly plan, you get unlimited dispute filing, many different types of letters that they will write for you, and a helpful web portal available to you 24 hours per day, seven days per week to follow your individual progress. 

Whatever way you choose to pay, the Credit Pros are the most expensive of the big five credit repair companies. Yet you get what you pay for as always, which includes individual, private consultation, cease and desist letters to collectors, and unlimited disputes. One downside of the company is that their services are not offered in all 50 states as of time of publication.

5. The Credit People

A relative late comer to the big five credit repair firms is The Credit People. Founded only in 2001, they still have two decades of experience in helping you with your bad credit profiles. They have already assisted more than 100,000 individuals in raising their credit scores. 

The firm is huge on high quality customer service and this is their focus, in providing past and current clients with unrivalled benefits. Among these advantages are free credit score and credit report summaries, less expensive fees (including an only $19 one time upfront fee), and 24 hour full access to your online account portal. The company is committed to score-driven results, and goes above and beyond the usual means of disputing with the big three credit bureaus to achieve these. 

They do not have a contract and offer a flat monthly fee of under $80 per month. Their satisfaction guarantee ensures that you will only pay for results with which you are fully satisfied. This concludes with three credit scores and reports from Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion at no additional charge to you. The company promises to help you get the highest potential credit score that you can achieve personally. 

How to Find a Trustworthy Credit Repair Service

How to Find a Trustworthy Credit Repair Service

The credit repair process is as much of an art as it is a science, and no two individuals’ time requirements will be the same. It will always require at the very least 30 days to do, but can easily take up to six months and even longer. This time frame all depends on the prior condition of your credit profile. 

If you only have a couple of inaccurate items that are holding back your score, this can be fixed far quicker than a lengthy history of defaults and delinquencies can. If you are prepared for it to require three months, then you will likely not be too disappointed if it runs another month or two over this. 

What will happen if all of the negative items on your credit reports are accurate?

Usually such accurate negative information can not be taken off of a credit report. You could pay off a delinquent or charged off account, and this would result in the account status simply being updated to reveal that it has been paid in full. Unfortunately, accurate derogatory remarks like charge offs and late payments will follow your credit report around for seven years from the first delinquency date. That is of course unless you employ a skilful credit repair company which is practiced in negotiating to have such remarks removed by the original creditors and lenders. 

There are extenuating circumstances in which such negative items can be removed. If the creditor made a billing error somewhere, then you can force the creditor to contact the credit reporting bureaus to take the account completely off of your credit report. If you challenge the debt and the creditor can not substantiate it with original documents that prove its validity, they will also be forced to get it removed. 

As a general rule, this is far more likely with a home foreclosure than it is with a credit card bill. 

How Much Do Credit Repair Services Cost?

Each credit repair service will have its own price or tier of pricing to work on your credit reports. In general, they will charge you by the month and only after they have completed the months’ work. According to NerdWallet, the average professional credit repair service costs around $100 per month.

Other companies may charge a one time, lump sum amount of $300 for six months of credit repair. If you have a lot of items that need to be addressed on your credit profile, you might save money by paying such a lump sum, as more than six months of credit repair services could otherwise cost you in excess of $600 (and this amount of time to fix credit reports is not unheard of). 

You could pay as little as $30 per month to one of these companies, but beware that you generally get what you pay for with credit repair (as well as in most areas of life). 

How Do Credit Repair Companies Work?

Legitimate credit repair companies do many things on your behalf to improve your credit reports and scores. They will usually begin services by asking for current copies of your credit reports from all of the big three consumer credit reporting bureaus Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. Once they have obtained these complete reports, they will then go carefully through your reports looking for any derogatory remarks such as delinquent accounts and charge offs, collections accounts, and bankruptcies. 

Their next step is to create a specific plan for the best way to dispute any errors and negotiate with your individual creditors with the ultimate goal of getting such items removed. Such a plan of attack could include sending out letters that make requests for debt validation, dispatching dispute letters for inaccurate negative comments, and making contacts (in writing) to collectors ordering them to cease and desist their collections efforts against you. 

These companies will also encourage you to get proactive as part of their plan. They will recommend that you apply for one or more new credit accounts in order to have new positive information updates included on your credit reports. Only be sure that you are able to make timely consistent monthly payments on any new accounts added so that you do not make your fragile credit situation any worse. It is not always a sensible approach to seek our more credit that you do not need. 

Also beware any credit repair service plans that are big on trying to get accurate negative information removed from your reports. Unless they uncover accounts where the creditors will not be able to verify and validate the original debts, they will not be able to get these removed from your reports (absent negotiating to pay them in full).

Is Credit Repair Legal in All 50 States?

Credit repair services are legal in every state of the U.S. Thanks to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, you have the right to make certain that all of the information contained in your personal credit files is completely accurate. This does not mean that every credit repair company under the sun is above board though. In fact the opposite is more likely to be the case.

Thanks to the two primary credit repair federal laws the Fair Credit Reporting Act and the Credit Repair Organizations Act (and other important legal sections 609 and 611), your rights to fix credit mistakes in your reports are guaranteed as a consumer. Each state also maintains its own host of statutes for regulating credit repair services and the industry as a whole. 

How Can You Verify the Legitimacy of a Credit Repair Company?

The easiest and fastest way to check out a credit repair company’s legitimacy and all around reputation is to go to the Better Business Bureau website and enter their name. The BBB maintains ratings and complaints on these companies which can save you the cost and heartache of getting involved with a credit repair scammer. 

If you want to spend more time, you can familiarize yourself with the Credit Repair Organizations Act to know what signs to look for in a crooked company which is propagating scams. You should always strenuously avoid those credit repair companies that break the law by asking for payment upfront in advance, who promise to make you a new credit identity, or who guarantee that your credit score will rise as a result of their efforts. 

Besides the monthly fee to work on your credit reports and profile, most legitimate companies will also assess a one time customer intake fee to get started. This helps them to cover the costs of obtaining all three of your full credit reports. The customer intake fee could easily run as much as from $100 to $200, depending on the company and its procedures. 

4 Reasons You May Want to Use a Credit Repair Service

4 Reasons You May Want to Use a Credit Repair Service

The first is that credit repair companies will proactively take charge of your situation. These are dedicated, trained, and highly experienced professionals who have prior working relationships with both the credit bureaus and creditors and who possess a track record of resolving consumer credit issues.

Secondly, using the credit repair organizations saves you huge amounts of time. The process is typically both tedious and demandingly long. Knowledge of a number of laws and back and forth communications will be required on every single item that you question on your credit report. Some scenarios may even involve you having to challenge original creditor claims, or to deal with collection agencies, the big three credit bureaus, or all of these groups together. 

When you pay for this important service, you give authorization for the pros to handle your credit reports, obtain information, write the letters, keep the communication records, and handle all of the considerable follow up work. This frees up considerably your schedule and takes the worry from your mind. 

Remember a third reason in that these repair services are expertly versed in and knowledgeable of the relevant credit laws. This helps them to obtain the improvements in credit reports that you are seeking. They know how to work the laws and system for your benefit. 

Credit repair services understand how to operate under the FCRA Fair Credit Reporting Act, the FDCPA Fair Debt Collections Practices Act, the FCBA Fair Credit Billing Act, and various other consumer protection laws. 

Finally, you will reap longer term gains by paying manageable monthly fees to credit repair companies over several months. If you use a company which provides results in repairing and boosting your credit, this will continue to save you money for the rest of your financial life. 

Every time you take out a mortgage or a car loan, your interest rates will be lower, leading to significantly less interest paid out over the life of your loans. 

Spending the money today to better your credit score will eventually pay you back handsomely versus those who do not take the time to address inaccurate and unsubstantiated credit report data. It may even lead to better apartment rentals and job offers in the future. You simply can not afford to put off or ignore entirely improving your poor credit. 

With 79 percent of all credit reports riddled with mistakes, it is entirely in your rights to have the big three credit bureaus prove the data or remove it entirely. 

How Do I Access Information from Specialized Bureaus?
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How Do I Access Information from Specialized Bureaus?

Besides the big three credit reporting bureaus of Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion, there are also some specialized consumer bureaus that contain important information which can definitely affect your finances. You can gain access to these if you need to. The most important of these for most consumers is the ChexSystems.

ChexSystems

When you go into a bank to apply for a new bank account, over 80 percent of banks will pull your report from ChexSystems to learn if you have any prior history of misusing bank accounts. Such information remains in their systems for five years after the fact. 

It will influence their approval or rejection decision for your new account. 

Chex Systems is actually a national consumer reporting agency that manages information on the use of checking and savings accounts. If you have failed to pay a fee or bounced a check, this information will be contained in your ChexSystems file. The good news is that you can obtain both your report and score from the agency at no cost. 

The report is the most useful information to have. It provides you with the back story on the reason a bank might have turned down your new account request. You are able to obtain a free copy of this report each year. You can simply request your report online by filling out this consumer disclosure form. They will send you the report which should arrive in only five business days or faster. 

CLUE Reports

CLUE is the claims information report database created and maintained by LexisNexis the international giant consumer reporting agency. They hold as much as seven years worth of your personal property and automobile claims history. 

This report will have your personal information including all of the following: your name and date of birth, policy number, type and date of loss, claim amount the firm paid out, description of the property that was covered, and your property address. The insurance companies report all claims where they pay out, deny, or establish a file on a claim. 

These CLUE reports are important where insurance is concerned. A potential insurer will likely pull your CLUE report if you ask for an insurance quote or make a full application for coverage. They are interested in your history of claims in determining what coverage they will offer you and at what cost. Their research demonstrates a consistent relationship between prior paid claims and future reported claims. 

You are able to get your free annual copy of your CLUE report courtesy of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. You can request this from LexisNexis online at: Request your personal report online (www.lexisnexis.com) or by calling their consumer center at 866-312-8076.     

Judicial Judgments

It used to be that judicial judgments showed up on your three credit reports. This practice ended in 2017/2018 when the big three bureaus eliminated all judgments from your reports and scoring algorithms.

Bankruptcy is the only public record that shows up on your credit reports anymore. In order to find out if there are any other judgments against you nowadays, you would need to order a copy of your public records from the county in which you reside. You can do this in person at the courthouse or by going to their website online. 

Utilities History 

Your utility payment history will appear on your credit report. If you are behind on payments or have charge offs with any utilities, then it will show up here. This is something that you should keep a lookout for on your credit report. Timely utility payment history will not appear on your report. It is only if you fall meaningfully behind that there will be reports made to the big three consumer credit reporting bureaus. 

Rental Background Check

Rental background checks are not simple reports compiled by a consumer reporting agency. Instead, they comprise information mostly found on your consumer credit report, such as your personal details and address, credit score, and listings of any collections, inquiries, and bankruptcies. 

They also include your employment history, public records, criminal records, and eviction records. Most of this other information the organization which is conducting the rental background check will obtain from your public records or from the application that they make you fill out for them. 

If you have been repeatedly delinquent on rent payments or not paid some final rent amount in the past, there is a good chance that it will show up as reported to the credit bureaus under derogatory information. Experian RentBureau is a separately maintained report that Experian keeps on timely and late rent payments. 

You can request a fee report from them by contacting them on their website.

Medical Insurance History

Your medical and insurance histories may not be given out without your expressed written permission. Because of this, there is no single national medical records database or report containing this information. Instead, individual doctor’s offices and hospitals each have some of your medical insurance information. 

Thanks to the Data Protection Act of 1998, no doctor will comply with a request from an insurer to reveal your medical records unless you agree in writing. The state health information exchanges are the closest things to a national database or report on your medical insurance history. You can contact the one for your state to see if they have your information available in a report to obtain a copy should you require it.

Can I Remove Foreclosure Remarks From My Credit Report?
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How Can I Remove Foreclosure Remarks From My Credit Report?

Foreclosures have a devastating impact on your credit report. The good news is that these are easier to get removed than other derogatory items. Lenders have made countless mistakes with foreclosures in the past, forcing some financial institutions to have to offer restitution to consumers when they mismanaged their foreclosures.

Among these errors were rubber stamping documents and not pursuing the proper procedure required by foreclosure law. This is why it is easier to get such records completely removed from your credit report today. 

For one thing, the lender may not even possess the necessary records. Many original lenders went bankrupt during the Global Financial Crisis and Great Recession of 2007 to 2009. Countless original documents necessary to verify the mortgage disappeared in the chaos. Many such mortgages and foreclosure rights have been sold on to new banks, creating a paperwork nightmare for the banks. 

Such sales had the unintended side effect of causing banks to fail in their task of accurate record keeping. If the bank that was listed on your credit report has gone out of business, the new bank will likely not be able to verify the foreclosure. 

All information like this in your credit file that they can not verify with the necessary documentation has to be removed by law.

Armed with this background knowledge, you should write to your foreclosing lender directly. If the credit bureaus will not remove the foreclosure, go straight to the source of the derogatory information. 

Request that they take off the entry because of mistakes. Allow them a 30 day deadline to do so before you take further action. 

In many cases, the foreclosing bank will not be able to produce the original documentation and records to verify your foreclosure. They might also decide it is not worth the time and effort to track them down. In either scenario, they will likely simply choose to remove your foreclosure remark from your credit report. 

This is worth the considerable time that it may take on your part to make the phone calls, write the letters, and follow up on, since it requires seven years for a foreclosure to drop off of your credit report otherwise.