The Truth About The Law Firms That Claim They Can Clean Up Your Credit

When you look at the world of Credit Repair there are seemingly countless providers out there claiming they are THE source to help get your credit cleaned up and back into the land of the living. Heck, I just did a Google search for ‘Credit Repair Companies’ and came back with 455,000 listings!

Given the fact that I was your average college student who got a credit card at a baseball game because I wanted the free Giants towel they were giving away when I applied for one, I came out of college with less than stellar credit. As a matter of fact, in my second year of grad school I pulled my credit and my mid score was 510!! Pretty lousy.

I didn’t have the foggiest idea what to do to fix the problem, so I signed up to work with a company (a law firm in Utah) that a friend of mine had recommended because he was using them to try to get his credit cleaned up from his bankruptcy years earlier. He hadn’t gotten any results yet, but figured they must be decent because their website said they helped thousands of people and were only charging $39/mo.

After 12 months of being on their service I didn’t have a single thing removed or updated that was to be done from the $468 I had so willingly sent them. My friend and I both canceled the service that same month.

The problem is that we weren’t just some unique cases that the firm was stumped with… this is the norm! There is no accountability in this industry and no performance guarantee’s are required, and as a matter of fact, one law firm says they’re illegal!! How is that not the ‘Fox building the hen-house’? Telling you they aren’t allowed to guarantee their performance or the results and then charging you for it every month. It just doesn’t add up.

So you must be asking yourself how these firms stay in business month after month if they don’t get the results their clients are hoping and paying them for? One reason is related to a quote I will never get out of my head for the rest of my life from a statistics class I had in college and the professor, Mr. Nichols, said it over and over.

‘Causation does not equal Correlation’

What this means is that if a result happened (increased credit score) while doing an activity (paying a law firm every month), this does not always mean that the activity was what caused the result.

When someone signs up to get a law firm to clean up their credit, what do you think they do about their spending and bill paying habits at the same time? They get them in line, too, because it is consistent with maintaining good credit. So what happens is that over time, as they continue behaving properly (paying bills on time and paying off credit card and collection balances) their scores go up, regardless of what they are doing with the credit repair company.

The problem is that they instantly assume that the credit repair company MUST be doing something productive because their score went up, but they don’t realize they did it all on their own and could have saved the $450+ at the same time.

I’m not saying that these credit repair companies are committing fraud, although some do, or that they are deceiving their clients, because I think they truly want to help, but that doesn’t mean that I need to endorse them or paint a prettier picture. They can help clients who don’t know how to write a letter to the bureau’s
explaining how something is mis-reported and they can help get items that shouldn’t be reported any more due to the limitations in the Fair Credit Reporting Act taken off after their allowed reporting time.

Another problem I have with these companies is that they charge on a monthly basis with no end in sight. This is conveniently done because they’re hoping that you forget about the payment since it’s set up automatically to be paid on your credit card or out of your checking account every month and I guarantee they collect months
after your score is to where you want it or the items are updated that need to be updated. They definitely aren’t going to call you up after your score gets to your targeted goal and say ‘Well you hit your goal, so we’re going to stop charging your account, so thank you for your business and feel free to call us if you ever need help again.’

So what can you do?

First, start implementing the strategies in this email course, because I’m going to give you all the tips and tools I’ve used to not only increase my score from 510 to 700+ in just over a year, but also what I’ve done to increase my clients scores over and over to get them into better financing for their homes.

Second, if your score is horrible and there are a lot of things on your report keeping it down, start interviewing credit repair providers, but be sure to use the following questions that all have to be answered:

1. What is the fee for getting my credit report cleaned up? Is it a flat fee or a never ending monthly charge?

2. How long will this take?

3. What items are you willing to guarantee that you can get removed? When they are removed, do you guarantee that they will never come back or that you’ll get them removed again for free if they do?

4. What will you do if you don’t meet the objectives and goals we agree to when you start my file? Do you have any type of refund process or other guarantee?

If they can’t answer these in a way that gives you 100% confidence, don’t move forward with them and start giving them your money and time.