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Help cleaning up mess made by credit repair firm

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Anonymous
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Help cleaning up mess made by credit repair firm

Hi. I'm new here and I have been quickly getting an education over the last couple of weeks from reading these forums. An education that I unfortunately did not have beforehand.

 

I had a Chapter 7 BK in 2008 and I have been trying to get approved for a home loan. A lender we had been working with pushed us to use his partner's credit repair firm to improve our credit. I wasn't really sure what this meant and I thought we were already doing the right things by starting out with new lines of credit, keeping balances low, and making payments on time. We were told that we needed to do this to get a home loan approval within the next 3-6 months with our lender.

 

After getting educated, and learning a lot from the information here, I figured out that they have been attempting to get the negative items removed off of my credit report -- negative items that are valid like credit cards included in the bankruptcy and the public record of the bankruptcy itself. I have told them to stop everything they are doing and that I do not want to do business with them any longer. We are also looking for a different, above board, lender to work with.

 

After pulling my credit report myself, one of the negative accounts was removed from two of the 3 bureaus. There are still 2 open disputes happening across each of the bureaus as well.

 

I don't know how to undo the changes that were made and whatever associated damage was done. What liability have I exposed myself to by allowing this credit repair firm to get correct and valid information removed? From copies of the letters that were sent, one of the disputes is to remove the public bankruptcy record. Is a law being broken if this gets removed? Do I need to contact an attorney? Can one of the creditors come back and ask for debt that was already discharged?

 

I am not in a comfortable situation right now. I didn't now what I was getting into until we took matters into our own hands for understanding how all of this credit stuff actually works. I'm sure our credit was improving just fine, through our own actions, without any of this trouble.

 

Can someone please share some guidance or advice on our situation?

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1 REPLY 1
IOBA
Senior Contributor

Re: Help cleaning up mess made by credit repair firm

Someone will come along after me and give better advice....

 

My suggestion is to contact every company that you know the credit repair company may have had contact with (for example, Sears cc, or Chase Bank) and make sure that they know you are the ONLY person they are to deal with.  Period.  No one has a VALID power of attorney.  Put a phone password on each account.

 

Do not worry about the BK and the courts.   There are people who comb the records daily and sell that information to the credit bureaus.  No way to get it off unless it was in error, and even then, good luck!  (I speak from experience -- one of my old roomies had court baddies that ended up on MY credit report -- probably because people were lazy and they just matched up the address, not the name a LONG time ago)

 

Send a certified mail, return receipt to the Credit Repair company revoking the power of attorney immediately.

 

Opt out on your credit reports (just means that they are NOT suppose to sell your information to 3rd party).

 

**I'd leave the current disputes alone and let them just die out.  If they contact you for more information, then you can ask them to stop the investigation.**

 

Thank you for wanting to do the right thing.  Good luck with your house buying.

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