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Don't ever bother with them, you know the commercials you see on tv. Now mind you I'm a Mortgage Broker and can check all 3 reports quite easily. But awhile ago I signed up with them to see what it was about, first off it's bs they give you one score which doesn't mean crap (and legally they can as they say get your free score, not scores, you have to order their full version which cost more then normal and doesn't have the benefits of other companies). Forgot about it and paid off my Visa but still kept getting charged monthly from something called CIC or something like that. Fuggers charge you if you don't cancel. So I just got off the phone with them, oh my god LOL. They must have tried 15 different ways to try to keep my account activated and charging.

Nevermind that the lady was speaking straight off a script (god that annoys the hell out of me when dealing with credit cards or stuff like that, you can tell their reading off a script that sounds so stupid). They tried to get me to order all 3, didn't care. Told me well since it's activated and charged for hte month might as well keep paying it, but we'll send you a $25 gift card. Whupty friggen do, that won't even fill up a 1/4 of my trucks tank I could care less lol. "Well why do you want to cancel". "We give you updates". "Your a preferred memeber". "How about a $50 gift card"........and on and on, finally got them to cancel, stupid sales scripts don't work on me :D

If you want to see your credit, legally you can get all 3 bureau's to send you a copy once a year. Otherwise go to a company/site like mycreditkeeper.com , I usually recommend that to clients.
 
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Rapidity said:
The ones you can get for free from http://www.annualcreditreport.com DO NOT show the score. I thought it sucked. You have to pay to see your credit score.
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Yea they'll show you your history/inquiries/accounts etc, but no scores. I usually recommend mycreditkeeper but there are others. What I really hate now is trigger leads, basically if you apply for a loan and you receive a ton of calls your now a trigger lead. I deal with it all the time and I'm on a broker forum where most of us agree it should be illegal (the selling of trigger leads). The credit bureaus release your informtion to 3rd parties, after all their we keep your info private bs, which should be a violation of privacy. I warn every single one of my clients beforehand, and usually joke and say ever seen the movie Boiler Room (even though it was for stock trading) but the concept is the same. I usually never have to worry about a shopper or anything, my clients will just hang up on those calls.

When you get those telemarketed calls, I've seen the places that use those leads. Damn near none of them has a license, and are basically order takers that's it, they couldn't structure a loan to save their life. I've heard people tell my clients "I can beat his rates I have a 30 Year fixed at 1.25 blah blah" such bs it isn't funny. I love the ones who push Option Arms just to make the extra yield screwing the borrowers apr. It's only a good program if you can use it to your advantage (don't just count on appreciation). I see a lot of people using it to get into homes all the time which isn't good in a decline/stall like the market is in. If I have client that is adamant about it, I have a version of the Option Arm where all 4 choices are fixed (not adj) starting at 4% for the minimum which will still have some negative am, but not like those .95% type deals you see advertised everywhere. Once they see I'm actually trying to help them they understand.
 
dear god man.... are you trying to give me a headache? heh

I hope someone here understands all that.
 
Rapidity said:
dear god man.... are you trying to give me a headache? heh

I hope someone here understands all that.
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Me speaka financial:D , Scott will understand. Guess I went on a rant :D
 
Rapidity said:
The ones you can get for free from http://www.annualcreditreport.com DO NOT show the score. I thought it sucked. You have to pay to see your credit score.
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This site is good for individuals to watch and check their reports or tradelines as they are called in the business. You can pay extra to get the score on each and its nominal. Everyone should check their credit once annually minimum to make sure all trades are correct, and nothing has been recorded in error.

I dont need the score .... I know based upon all my tradelines being closed properly when no longer in use. All showing on time, never using more than 75% of a revolving tradeline, always keeping your longest revolving tradeline (credit card) open, and no collections. Thats what you really need to be concerned with. And obviously, making sure nobody has impersonated you.
 
If you pay for the items in collections in full will they be taken off your report or still count negatively toward your report/reduce your score??

Killr, Surfer?
 
dengood1 said:
If you pay for the items in collections in full will they be taken off your report or still count negatively toward your report/reduce your score??

Killr, Surfer?
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The bureaus won't take them off the report unless the creditor tells them to. After all, the bureaus work for the creditors and not for the consumers. Credit reports are primarily a collection tool now days anyway. It is just the creditors way of putting the screws to you if you don't pay them.

Items on a credit report are rated on a scale of 0 to 9. A collection is a 9. A paid collection is also a 9. Paying a collection has an upside and a downside. The upside is that it will show that you owe less money. The downside is that it will remain on your report for 7 years from the date of last activity. Paying it will be the last activity it sees, so you are assured to be haunted by it for a few years to come.

I worked in a consumer credit repair law firm for a few years, so obviously there are ways around things staying on your report. Once a creditor or collection agency is paid off they have less reason to validate the debt if you dispute it with the bureau. However, you still have to get through the bureaus before that can happen. Credit bureaus hate investigating items on your report simply because they aren't getting paid to do that. They would rather just ignore you or send you stall letters. They know that they are too big for the FTC to monitor too closely even if they wanted to. Therefore they get away with a lot of crap.

www.bankrate.com has a great credit calculator if you want a ballpark estimate of what your score is. I've tested it against hundreds of reports and it is always within 20 points either way of the true score.
 
dengood1 said:
If you pay for the items in collections in full will they be taken off your report or still count negatively toward your report/reduce your score??

Killr, Surfer?
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If you pay the collection off in full you generally still need to have your credit updated to reflect it. Sometimes a rapid rescore can work. On my side it's a little different since I can get the documentation and authorization from borrowers to prove and clear up derogatory items.

Reason I say that is companies (kinda like an f-u to you) will keep reporting the collection as unpaid even if they've been paid. I've had clients who had some collections that I had to clear up even though we showed proof they were paid. Sometimes the company will report it as "payment accepted, paid in full, zero balance" etc. Get's even more confusing as it depends also on how they report, to one depository, two, or three etc. Worst is when you have a few collections that have been resold over and over, and each agency trying to collect has reported it, and now you have multiple collections that are copies being reported.

What OCD said is correct above, the beauro's can be a pain in the ass. Equifax is absolutley horrible to deal with.
 
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couple errors above .... first, a collection can only be reported for 7 years from its first reporting, not last. That said , it is the consumers responsibility to track and repair these items when sold, transferred, and re-reported from agencys.

second, paid collections are better than unpaid collections. First, they will not continue to reduce your fair issacs or true credit score. They will in all likelylood continue to be reported (only showing a -0- balance) as they truly were bills/collections that were not paid in a timely period. And, when paid, they show the lender they made good on their debt. Remember your credit history is suppose to be a snap-shot of the past for an indicator of the future creditworthiness of a client.

There is nothing that a consumer cannot do on their own to repair a credit file, that a credit conselour does. They do offer time, and are typically better at negotiating reduced rates and settlements, but they hide under the blankets of "non profits" in most cases and pay themselves hansomly for the benefit.
 
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You are right on the 7 year thing. I actually had that mixed up. Positive accounts will show for 7 years from the date of last activity; not collections. However, it is not the consumers responsibility to dispute items on their credit when it is no longer being reported accurately. The bureaus are responsible for validating the accuracy of the information they report. Consumers have the ability to dispute inaccurate information, but if the bureaus would do their jobs to begin with then consumers wouldn't have to deal with it.

The only reason a paid collection is not as painful on your report as an unpaid one is becuase it adds to your debt ratio. Even when you pay it off it will affect your score. Your score isn't even based on your own report for the most part. The bureaus base your score off of the probability of what you will do with your credit in the future. They base that projection on what other people in similar situations are doing with their credit. That is why your score goes up and down even when you aren't doing anything to affect it. Trust me on this... I don't know what your specialty in credit reporting is, but for 3 years headed the research and development department of our firm and I know how credit reporting works better than just about anything else.

Credit repair agencies don't do anything that Taco Bell and Jiffy Lube don't do. You can perform all your own services if you really want to, but for those who don't have the time, patience, or know how to dispute their own credit reports, there are businesses out there who will do it for them. There isn't any need for them to hide either. The firm I worked for is the largest credit repair law firm in the country and it is no secret that they do it for money. Personally I think it is a waste of money to pay someone like them for services you can do yourself, but tens of thousands of people are actively paying them by the month to dispute items on their reports. Some of them see great results because the items truely are inaccurate, and others don't see any progress because they are morons and think that they can declare bankruptcy one day and then dispute it off their report the next. I had to leave the firm due to a conflict of ethics that I was having. That job was surely an education if nothing else...
 
killrwheels@autogeek said:
no above yours .... your post just beat mine.
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hehe, don't challenge me gold chain man, :D j/k

Also be careful with those Credit Repair Agencies as some charge an arm and leg. They can't remove crap unless it's something that actually shouldn't be reporting. They make it seem like they'll remove everything. Techniquelly they can say that as they'll send out the papers which legally have to be replied back to within 30 days or it's wiped off. However, catch is most creditors aren't dumb and are going to reply back. What they can do, you can do yourself with the right forms.
 
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You don't even need the right forms. It just takes a simple letter.
 
OCDetails said:
You don't even need the right forms. It just takes a simple letter.
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You can write a letter, in my case I already have forms made up (kinda fill in the blank).

Sometimes there's nothing you can do. Had one lady call up for 100% financing. She had crap credit lol. It was page, after page, after page, after page of straight collections. Yet she still wondered why her credit was so bad. "I'll pay those when I want to" was her reply. "I know the law, after 7 years they can't do anything" blah blah blah. Told her she had about 5 more years to go and to call me then :D .
 
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