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Credit Repair Scams1
Josephine Turner2Every day, some companies across the nation make appeals to consumers with poor credit histories. Many of these companies guarantee they can erase bad credit, remove bankruptcies, judgments, liens, and bad loans from your credit files and create a new credit identity.
These companies promise, for a fee, to clean up a credit report so a consumer can get a car loan, home mortgage, insurance, or even a job. The truth is, they can't deliver.
According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), some of these companies go so far as advising you to dispute all information in your credit report and to create a new credit identity. Remember, it's a federal crime to make false statements on a loan or credit application. No one can legally remove accurate and timely negative information from a credit report.
If credit information is wrong, the law allows consumers to ask for a reinvestigation of information in their file that they dispute as inaccurate or incomplete. There is no charge for this service. In short, everything a credit repair clinic can do for a consumer legally, the consumer can do for him or herself at little or no cost.
Only time, a conscious effort, and a personal debt repayment plan can improve a consumer's credit report.
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Footnotes
1. This document is FAR9016, one of a series of the Department of Family, Youth and Community Sciences, Florida Cooperative Extension Service, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida. First published December 2007. In the interest of time or clarity, the broadcast version of this script may have been modified. Please visit the EDIS Web site at http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu.2. Josephine Turner, professor, Department of Family, Youth and Community Sciences, Cooperative Extension Service, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611.
The Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS) is an Equal Opportunity Institution authorized to provide research, educational information and other services only to individuals and institutions that function with non-discrimination with respect to race, creed, color, religion, age, disability, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, political opinions or affiliations. For more information on obtaining other extension publications, contact your county Cooperative Extension service.
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Cooperative Extension Service, University of Florida, IFAS, Florida A. & M. University Cooperative Extension Program, and Boards of County Commissioners Cooperating. Larry Arrington, Dean.
Copyright Information
This document is copyrighted by the University of Florida, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) for the people of the State of Florida. UF/IFAS retains all rights under all conventions, but permits free reproduction by all agents and offices of the Cooperative Extension Service and the people of the State of Florida. Permission is granted to others to use these materials in part or in full for educational purposes, provided that full credit is given to the UF/IFAS, citing the publication, its source, and date of publication.