- Home
- Finance
- Personal Finance
- Credit Repair Scams and Legitimate Credit Repair Services
Credit Repair Scams and Legitimate Credit Repair Services
- By Lexington Law
- Published 01/15/2010
- Personal Finance
- Unrated
Lexington Law
Providing credit repair services since 1991, Lexington Law has helped over 500,000 clients legally take on their credit. Last year alone, Lexington Law helped clients remove over 600,000 negative items from their credit reports.
View all articles by Lexington Law
The credit repair world can be a frightening place. Given the number of news articles, television segments, and "expert" pieces cautioning against fraudulent credit repair services that get pushed out by well regarded media outlets, it can look like the only logical choice is to avoid credit repair companies entirely - a course of action the news outlets seem to advocate.
A quick search turns up dozens of articles detailing how to avoid a credit repair scam. Most talk about red flags such as companies charging large upfront fees, claim to help you create a clean credit report, don't keep you informed of your right to repair you credit yourself, and generally make misleading or untruthful statements. At this point, however, very few articles mention that there are credit repair services like Lexington Law who do not engage in the illegal or fraudulent practices that are common to a credit repair scam. In fact, many articles from established news agencies like CNN end by suggesting consumers with credit problems "get legitimate help" from consumer credit counseling services.
Not only is this advice incomplete, but it is also 100 percent useless to people who are in need of credit
repair. Credit counseling programs may be able to help people who are unable to make payments on their debts, but it will do nothing to improve your credit score. Some credit counseling programs may even make your credit score worse.
Unlike consumer credit counseling services that work to bring your debts under control, credit repair services are designed to help you increase your credit score. They are not mutually exclusive services and in many cases, a person who has used a credit counseling service to help manage their debts becomes a good candidate for credit repair.
Legal credit repair services like those provided by Lexington Law serve a purpose and it is a disservice to imply otherwise. Hopefully as consumers and news columnists alike become more familiar with credit repair and the services credit repair organizations provide, we will start seeing a better balance between news stories warning of credit repair scams and news stories listing the qualities to look for in a legitimate credit repair service.
A quick search turns up dozens of articles detailing how to avoid a credit repair scam. Most talk about red flags such as companies charging large upfront fees, claim to help you create a clean credit report, don't keep you informed of your right to repair you credit yourself, and generally make misleading or untruthful statements. At this point, however, very few articles mention that there are credit repair services like Lexington Law who do not engage in the illegal or fraudulent practices that are common to a credit repair scam. In fact, many articles from established news agencies like CNN end by suggesting consumers with credit problems "get legitimate help" from consumer credit counseling services.
Not only is this advice incomplete, but it is also 100 percent useless to people who are in need of credit
Unlike consumer credit counseling services that work to bring your debts under control, credit repair services are designed to help you increase your credit score. They are not mutually exclusive services and in many cases, a person who has used a credit counseling service to help manage their debts becomes a good candidate for credit repair.
Legal credit repair services like those provided by Lexington Law serve a purpose and it is a disservice to imply otherwise. Hopefully as consumers and news columnists alike become more familiar with credit repair and the services credit repair organizations provide, we will start seeing a better balance between news stories warning of credit repair scams and news stories listing the qualities to look for in a legitimate credit repair service.