Before deciding who you want to fix your credit, it’s important to understand how credit repair companies repair credit.
How To Know If a Credit Repair Company Is Reputable
The best way to check that a company is legitimate is to search the state they operate from for a business license. Pay attention to how long they have been in business. Typically, a business over twenty years old reflects the company is doing something right.
Conducting an online search for customer reviews is another great way to gauge a business’ reputation.
Beware of Guarantees Success
Per the Credit Repair Organizations Act (CROA) it’s actually illegal for Credit repair companies to guarantee specific results. They can guarantee what work they’ll do, but not the results. Ultimately, the outcome of a dispute is dependent on the response (or lack thereof) by the creditor to the bureaus. No third party can promise what the creditor’s response will be. Therefore, beware of anyone offering money-back guarantees or specific success rate guarantees.
Legal Limits on Upfront Fees for Credit Repair
Credit Repair companies are also not allowed to charge up-front for dispute services. A small setup fee may be billed which covers the costs of setting up a new client in their records, but not for the dispute work itself. Anyone trying to charge large up-front fees to fix your credit should be avoided.
What Makes The Credit Guru Different from Most Other Credit Repair Companies
The Credit Guru is a small company geared toward a personalized experience. No outsourcing, no big call center; just the same few people who are all familiar with your case. We offer free no-obligation consultations and monthly status updates. While our focus is the removal of negative history from the credit files, we’re also available to discuss managing satisfactory credit and other means to maximize the credit scores from all angles at once for a faster boost. We’re happy to coordinate with lenders to work together and ensure we’re all on the same page when it comes to reaching your financing goals.
The Credit Guru does not use AI or automated software. Our experienced dispute specialists personally review reports and draft disputes to the bureaus. This avoids generalized reviews of the credit which could overlook important details, and it avoids automated dispute drafts which miss case-specific opportunities that can play a key role in the success of the disputes.
Why Disputing Everything at Once Beats “Slow Drip” Tactics
OTHER credit repair companies often claim disputing just a few items at a time is more effective. Such claims are based on the use of automated online disputing (which does limit how many items can be disputed at once). This lowers their operating costs. Disputing only a few items at a time also means no potential improvement for the other items until it’s “their turn” … making the overall process take longer and allowing those credit repair companies to end up charging you more in monthly fees.
Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) there’s no legal limit to how many items a consumer can dispute at once. Each item disputed is processed by the bureau independently of the other items disputed. Whether you dispute just one priority or thirty accounts including your priority… it makes no difference in the outcome of that priority account. The Credit Guru wants to see as much progress as possible as quickly as possible. We dispute ALL negative items each month so that at the end of waiting thirty days, every one of those items has potential to be repaired or deleted.
Since each bureau reports information independent of the other two, The Credit Guru always caters our disputes based on each individual bureau’s report. If an account only reports negative to one or two bureaus, we only dispute it with the one or two bureaus and don’t draw unnecessary attention of the additional bureau(s).
When to Pause and Reset for Better Wins
The Credit Guru will even reach out to discuss a break strategy if we see a lack of progress a few months consecutively. A break strategy involves ceasing all disputes (and service fees) for three or more months. After the three-plus month period we like to reach out to review your case and discuss if you wish to resume services. This allows us to catch stubborn creditors off-guard and improves the chances for success when disputing further.
Transparent, Client-Friendly Pricing with No Hidden Fees
The Credit Guru charges an initial one-time setup fee, and at the end of each thirty days of service we charge a monthly service fee. We have no hidden fees. On the rare occasion that our monthly fees increase, any client already actively paying for service is locked into their current rate and the increased rate doesn’t affect them. We also provide a two-week grace period for late monthly service fees before adding a late fee. We never charge termination or cancellation fees (though the monthly fee is billed at the end of each month so there may be a final monthly payment due in order to close the account). Clients who have already paid a setup fee with us in the past and are already in our records are never charged a second setup fee to resume services… no matter how much time has passed.
If you’re in need of credit repair, take advantage of our no-obligation free consultation anytime.