For Lawyers: Difference between “credit repair” and my practice.

I don’t do “credit repair”. So I need to briefly educate you on an important distinction in consumer law, and correspondingly, in my practice.

Credit repair is at best a dirty business. It is a game where in exchange for money folk try to trick credit bureaus and creditors into deleting or changing accurate information in credit reports.

Contrast what I do: I represent people with inaccurate, incomplete or misleading information in their credit reports.

Say one of your clients ran into financial problems, could not keep up his car loan payments with ABC Bank, and the bank repossessed the car. His credit report will show, unremarkably, that he was late and that his car was repossessed. This is a nasty mark on his credit report which he wants to “clean” because now, even though his finances are great, he cannot refinance his mortgage at a lower rate—because of the repossession.

So the guy goes to a credit repair outfit which will send bogus letters to the credit bureaus, for example “questioning” the ABC Bank entry or possibly even saying that the ABC Bank account does not belong to him. Those letters will be at best dishonest and at worst flat out fraudulent.

I do not handle such a case: The guy did not pay; the car got repossessed; and, his credit report correctly shows that he did not pay and that his car was repossessed.

Contrast the situation, for example, where the ABC Bank entry really belonged to the client’ son, who perhaps shares the father’s name. The negative information in the father’s credit report is thus inaccurate. I will handle that case for the father (but not for the son) and because the Fair Credit Reporting Act has a fee-shifting provision, I will not charge him any money.

Please consider having your clients who have legitimate credit reporting problems take a look at Why Pay a Credit Repair Company to Do What a Consumer Lawyer Will Do for Free?