Credit repair
How much does credit repair cost?
The law doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated.
What you pay
Every credit report is different, and so is every budget. Your credit advisor audits your report, gives you a free consultation and sends you a good-faith estimate of the total cost.
| Item removed | Fee per item |
|---|---|
| Collections, charge-offs, repossessions and bankruptcies | $85 |
| Foreclosures and short sales | $120 |
| Hard inquiries, personal-information errors and in-dispute notations | $30 |
- You don’t pay a fee unless we remove items from your report.
- Credit monitoring is a key part of the process. It’s $1 the day your report is pulled, then as low as $26.99 a month.
- Pay-per-deletion isn’t right for everyone, so a monthly payment plan is also available.
- Starting with your partner? Ask about our spousal discount.
How the dispute process works
We dispute negative, missing and unverifiable items on your credit report. The credit bureaus (TransUnion, Experian and Equifax) have 30 days to tell you the status of a dispute and up to 45 days to finish their investigation. When it’s done, the results are mailed to you.
The bureaus can respond in only three ways: delete, verify or update the information.
If they delete
That’s what we’re after. Most people don’t realize that once a negative item is deleted, it affects your score right away. A credit score isn’t updated daily or hourly. It’s calculated only when it’s requested, from whatever is on file at that moment.
For example: on Monday, a negative item is reported. On Tuesday, it’s deleted. When you pull a new report, it’s as if the item was never reported.
If they verify
For most credit repair companies, a verified item is the end of the road. At Credit Law Center, it’s where the most powerful part of the process begins.
When a creditor or collector verifies a questionable item, our attorneys send a debt validation demand: a legal document with six to nine questions, depending on the type of account. The creditor or collector usually responds in one of two ways:
- It sees the account was disputed last month and is now hearing from a law firm. Knowing it can’t verify the account, or that it’s reporting it incorrectly, it deletes the account.
- It answers the questions. Our paralegals compare those answers to the bureau’s investigation results, where we often find gaps or conflicting information.
Incomplete or conflicting information is often a violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) or the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA). We use it as leverage to request a deletion, which is the most common result. If that doesn’t work, the file goes to one of our attorneys, who decides whether to pursue a lawsuit or further negotiation.
If they update
An update means the information being reported was incomplete or inaccurate. That alone isn’t a violation: a creditor or collector can’t violate the FCRA unless the account has been disputed. That’s why disputing correctly, and documenting every step, matters so much.
Settling for deletion
After we’ve challenged an item and the creditor or collector has validated it, the final step is negotiating a settlement for deletion: you agree to pay the account, and they agree to remove it from your credit report. This can usually be done for less than the full balance.
What our clients say
Read reviews from Credit Law Center clients: