The Truth About Debt Relief

The most effective way of improving your credit score utilizes Section 609 of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Section 609 is a section of law that tells the credit bureaus and other reporting agencies exactly what they must do in order to make somebody’s debt information public.

The 87 pages of this law boils down to two basic things. First, the information they provide must be accurate. Second, that information must be verifiable.

Most credit repair companies attack the first part of the law – the accuracy of the information. They have their customers pretend that the debts aren’t theirs or get a second social security number to create a second credit file – a tactic which is highly illegal, by the way.

A legitimate credit restoration company will take it as a given that that the information on the report is accurate. They do this despite the fact that statistics show that 25% of the information on credit reports is in error.

It is much easier and more effective to put the burden of proof on the reporting agency to verify the information – that is, they leverage the second part of Section 609. They do this because they KNOW that the credit bureaus are not legally or properly verifying the information as required by the law.

So, it’s assumed everything in a credit report is 100% accurate. And they know better. They know that 25% of all credit reports have errors on them. The verifiable side, however, is an entirely different story. And Section 609 is explicit about what verifies an account. The only piece of information that verifies an account is a copy of the original documentation – i.e. the original contract between the debtor and the creditor. Very rarely does a credit bureau have this documentation!

So, to repair your credit and improve your credit score, you simply write a letter to the credit bureaus and ask for verifiable proof of the information on the report. If they don’t provide this within 30 days, they have broken the law.

While you can pursue this yourself, we recommend that you contact us so that we can put you in touch with a company that does this for a modest fee.

Filed under: Credit Restoration