Credit repair information and tips you can use

Have you recently been denied a loan, an apartment or a mortgage or a credit card? You may need information and advice on credit repair.

Being rejected for credit is often an indication of some negative entries on your credit report, which can happen in two circumstances.

One is that you have mismanaged your credit, including overusing your available credit. More commonly, your credit file has faulty information, which negatively affects your credit score.

No matter what situation you are in, it is imperative that you embark on credit repair as soon as possible.

A little self-education helps rectify your situation, so here is credit repair information you can use.

1. Start by requesting a copy of your credit report from all 3 credit bureaus. You are allowed to obtain free credit reports from each agency per year. You can also get a free credit report if you were denied credit in the past sixty days.

2. Upon receiving your report, study it carefully. You should examine each account (also known as a business line) and mark those that are incorrect and damage your credit rating. Mistakes are more surprisingly common.

3. Once you have determined which business lines are wrong entries, contact the credit bureau and request the removal of your report. You start with these because you have a legitimate reason to dispute and it is very likely that you have eliminated.

4. Even when you find some correct entries in your credit report, but the information is negative in nature, you can try to delete them. Find legitimate reasons, such as re-aging, which means resetting the account date, something especially common with debt collectors.

5. Make sure all your correspondence with creditors is by certified mail. However, you may not want to do this with credit bureaus, as it raises a red flag because this is what credit repair clinics advise their clients to do we buy houses.

6. The law allows 30 days for any action to be taken. If the credit bureaus determine that the entries were incorrect or the creditor cannot verify the account, it must be removed.

Just keep in mind that credit repair is not a quick fix, nor a one-day affair. You need persistence and guts.

There is no complete credit repair information that does not tell you the things you should not do. People with low credit scores often try desperate means to repair their credit and are often misinformed, ending up further hurting their credit. Here are some of the things you MUST NOT DO to repair your credit:

1. New credit file or file segregation - Many bogus credit repair companies lure people in with false promises and bad credit repair information, such as telling them they can create a new credit file. This is also known as file segregation and is illegal.

2. Many credit repair companies claim that they can repair credit by removing accurate negative information from their credit reports, thereby improving their score. Now this is not guaranteed. You must first understand the information deletion process. No one can remove negative items from your credit file, except credit bureaus and your creditors.

3. Don't close old active accounts: If you have active credit accounts, don't close them. Keep them paid on time as they help build credit history and therefore help increase your credit score.

4. Do not make advance payments for credit repair if you use a credit repair service. Asking for advance payments to repair credit is illegal. They can only charge you for legitimate services they have already provided. Don't be swayed by any contract that promises to repair your credit before any work has been done.