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Regardless of your track record or credit history, you can take some simple steps and do your own credit repair. You can begin right away, and it won’t cost you anything - but the improvement can be gigantic!

The first step is to get copies of your credit report, read them, and understand them. There are three credit reporting agencies, and there can be differences in your file between them.

The law entitles consumers to a free copy of the credit report, one from each of the three agencies: TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian. You are able to get one from each bureau every year.

The Federal Trade Commission, or FTC, has set up a website where you can order them: annualcreditreport.com. Be careful of any other website that claims to offer you free reports - this is the “official” site, and any others have strings attached.

You can begin your credit repair efforts once you have your reports in hand. You will want to go through them carefully, line by line.

Along with the report, you will get a “dispute” form - or an address where you can get it. This is where your initial credit repair efforts will focus.

For every entry that is incorrect, inaccurate, or outdated, you will be filing a dispute. Provide the correct information, or why it is incorrect, such as a debt that has been paid but not removed.

By law, the credit reporting agencies have 30 days to verify the information being disputed. If they cannot verify it, or don’t do so within the allotted 30 days, those entries must be removed from your credit report.

With just this simple step, some of these negative entries will be removed from your credit report. They will no longer contribute to a low credit score, and your score will immediately go up - sometimes by hundreds of points!

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If you want to restore your credit, then you should keep some things in your mind. Contrary to the rosy picture given by such service providers, repairing your credit is not an overnight job. If your credit score is bad, organizations that promise to fix your credit score may have called. These credit repair services will not be any help to you. Below are 5 methods to determine if a scam credit repair service is attempting to fool you.

An Advanced Results Guarantee

Avoid any advanced results guaranteed by the company which doesn’t bother to look at your unique situation before it offers you that guarantee. Simply put, these are the people who will tell you whatever it is that you want to hear and then run off with your money in the end. It may be pleasant to hear the good tidings from a credit repair service but you just cannot decide on such services that make a grand promise with nothing to back it up. Often this is a warning sign that a company is not as legitimate as it may have seemed at first.

Requires a Large Up-Front Payment

If a company asks you to pay them up front, then you should be very concerned about their validity. This is even truer for those scam credit repair services that want a large payment before they will even begin. It is not a happy thought, but there are people out there who are looking to pull the wool over your eyes. If they can do that under the veil of repairing credit, then they will hold no punches. Before you dedicate a large portion of your money to a scam credit repair service up front, you should consult other credit repair help options.

Changing your Identification Numbers

If a credit repair service comes to you and makes promises of improving your credit score by giving you’re a brand new identity, you should run far away. These companies will often try to tell you that they can help you by giving you a brand new social security number or a tax identification number. Not only will this not help repair your credit, but it is also a crime. You can get into big trouble messing around with those sorts of numbers.

They Contacted You

Most reputable credit repair firms will not advertise by sending out spam emails. If you are checking out a service as a result of some spam that you got in your inbox, then there is a good chance that the company is a little bit less than reputable. Try to stick with a credit repair service that does their marketing in a more traditional way, as these firms are much more likely to end up providing a legitimate service to you.

Use your Common Sense

You should feel good about getting help so if you are nervous then there is probably a good reason for your feelings. This decision is no different than your other financial decisions, all of which should be made with common sense. By now you should be aware of the looks of a legitimate business and a scam. If you sense something is wrong or “off” when dealing with a certain company, it is best to look elsewhere.

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