topic Re: Lexington Law and deletions in Rebuilding Your Credit

Lexington Law and deletions

nycfico — Mon, 10 Feb 2014 20:16:35 GMT

I just signed up with Lexington Law today...despite the very mixed reviews I read about them. I figure I have little to lose, other than $100 per month, if they can get some of my chargeoffs deleted fro my record.

My Fico scores range from about 650 to 690. This is a big improvement from a year ago, when they were about 100 points lower, but they are still too low to qualify for a mortgage and my understanding is that my 20 or so negative marks are going to hold me back from breaking through, even though I'm up to date on payments now and rebuilding.

My quesiton is this...they claim that they will put the "burden" of responding on past creditors. Almost all of these negative marks are legit as far as I can tell (barring any technicalities). One is something I feel I have a legit claim on.

But in their pitch to me, they said that sometimes the banks or creditors won't respond within 30 days and if that happens, the mark is deleted. If that's true, then, what's to stop somebody from continually disputing things over and over again, either by myself or through a firm like them, figuring that eventually one might get through? It would seem that couldn't be the case...but I see nothing stopping anybody from taking that angle.

This is not how I prefer to do business, but I had a lot of ugly situations crop up at once and after having stellar credit for years found myself in really bad shape...

Could some of these marks (chargeoffs mainly) be solved simply by barraging them with requests?

Re: Lexington Law and deletions

Shogun — Mon, 10 Feb 2014 20:30:16 GMT

@nycfico wrote:
I just signed up with Lexington Law today...despite the very mixed reviews I read about them. I figure I have little to lose, other than $100 per month, if they can get some of my chargeoffs deleted fro my record.

My Fico scores range from about 650 to 690. This is a big improvement from a year ago, when they were about 100 points lower, but they are still too low to qualify for a mortgage and my understanding is that my 20 or so negative marks are going to hold me back from breaking through, even though I'm up to date on payments now and rebuilding.

My quesiton is this...they claim that they will put the "burden" of responding on past creditors. Almost all of these negative marks are legit as far as I can tell (barring any technicalities). One is something I feel I have a legit claim on.

But in their pitch to me, they said that sometimes the banks or creditors won't respond within 30 days and if that happens, the mark is deleted. If that's true, then, what's to stop somebody from continually disputing things over and over again, either by myself or through a firm like them, figuring that eventually one might get through? It would seem that couldn't be the case...but I see nothing stopping anybody from taking that angle.

This is not how I prefer to do business, but I had a lot of ugly situations crop up at once and after having stellar credit for years found myself in really bad shape...

Could some of these marks (chargeoffs mainly) be solved simply by barraging them with requests?

They will file dispute after dispute after dispute with the CSRs. Why? because that's all they can do. They can't contact the creditors, they can't do PFDs, they can't do GWs. They will dispute, dispute, dispute. And if you actually look at the CROA guidlines, it will expressively say that disputing accurate TLs is a violation of the CROA.

Re: Lexington Law and deletions

Anonymous — Mon, 10 Feb 2014 20:29:40 GMT

@nycfico wrote:
I just signed up with Lexington Law today...despite the very mixed reviews I read about them. I figure I have little to lose, other than $100 per month, if they can get some of my chargeoffs deleted fro my record.

My Fico scores range from about 650 to 690. This is a big improvement from a year ago, when they were about 100 points lower, but they are still too low to qualify for a mortgage and my understanding is that my 20 or so negative marks are going to hold me back from breaking through, even though I'm up to date on payments now and rebuilding.

My quesiton is this...they claim that they will put the "burden" of responding on past creditors. Almost all of these negative marks are legit as far as I can tell (barring any technicalities). One is something I feel I have a legit claim on.

But in their pitch to me, they said that sometimes the banks or creditors won't respond within 30 days and if that happens, the mark is deleted. If that's true, then, what's to stop somebody from continually disputing things over and over again, either by myself or through a firm like them, figuring that eventually one might get through? It would seem that couldn't be the case...but I see nothing stopping anybody from taking that angle.

This is not how I prefer to do business, but I had a lot of ugly situations crop up at once and after having stellar credit for years found myself in really bad shape...

Could some of these marks (chargeoffs mainly) be solved simply by barraging them with requests?

Any time you do a dispute the burden of proof is on the creditor. No matter who does the disputing. And the outcome is the same. If they don't respond, yes, it can be deleted. The problem with that is, later on down the line, the creditor can respond that it is a valid debt and reinsert it on your credit report. The CRAs would need to certify it was in fact valid and notify you within 5 days of the reinsertion.

If they are valid charge offs and reporting correctly there is no basis for a dispute to begin with.

Once an item is disputed and it is resolved, disputing again and again will only lead to a friviolous dispute and the CRAs will stop doing anything with them.

Re: Lexington Law and deletions

Whitneyy — Mon, 10 Feb 2014 21:25:19 GMT

Hello, and welcome!

In my opinion, you can get more done than Lexington Law just by doing a little research on these forums and knowing your rights. For example, you can search some of the collection agencies that's listed on your credit report and see how others had experiences and successes with them. Lexington Law only got of a friend of mine medical debt but he still couldnt qualify for an apartment.

Re: Lexington Law and deletions

Anonymous — Tue, 11 Feb 2014 19:02:36 GMT

Does Lexington Law send out letters, or do they just hit the dispute button on your online report?

Re: Lexington Law and deletions

Whitneyy — Tue, 11 Feb 2014 20:56:48 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Does Lexington Law send out letters, or do they just hit the dispute button on your online report?

They dispute everything. You can send out your OWN letters.

Re: Lexington Law and deletions

Anonymous — Tue, 11 Feb 2014 21:28:54 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Does Lexington Law send out letters, or do they just hit the dispute button on your online report?

I don't know if they send letters over and over or if they just hit a button, but either way the result is the same, and it is nothing you can't do on your own for the price of a stamp. If you list the companies you have on your credit reports, age, amounts owed, etc... there is a good chance we can probably help you better than they ever will, and it's free.

Re: Lexington Law and deletions

Anonymous — Tue, 11 Feb 2014 21:29:51 GMT

Also.. that's 100 per month you could be using to settle a debt, pay off utilization, get a secured credit card, or in some way improve your situation that is being wasted.

Re: Lexington Law and deletions

GBguy — Wed, 12 Feb 2014 22:40:57 GMT

Lexington got over 15 items removed from my reports. I would say they were worth the 100/month. And I only had to pay them 2 months worth.

Re: Lexington Law and deletions

gdale6 — Wed, 12 Feb 2014 23:35:07 GMT

You will get opinions on both sides of this, mine is why pay someone for something when you can do it yourself. You already have the best available to you in this forum and others that are online. The information they contain is worth its weight in gold and saved $. In the end it will be up to you to determine whether or not you want to do it yourself. I wish you well

Re: Lexington Law and deletions

meka1984 — Fri, 14 Feb 2014 03:39:14 GMT

You can do it yourself, but Im happy with them. And they do send out goodwill letters. And they DO NOT dispute your entire credit report. You can chose which accounts are of a higher priority. So that helps.

Re: Lexington Law and deletions

Repo-ed — Fri, 14 Feb 2014 12:20:37 GMT

I had great results through my first rebuild years ago via Lexington.

I would very much reccomend them, but again - I had more success on my 2nd rebuild by just doing it myself.

So I guess the bottom-line is, do you want to do the letters, or pay them to do it.

Re: Lexington Law and deletions

nycfico — Fri, 14 Feb 2014 17:07:32 GMT

So in following up with my original question...just got a pleasant surprise that my lowest fico score has jumped from 544 to 561...and the other two are now nearing 600. it appears that it's because of a charged off account from Chase is now reporting to be both in dispute, but also reporting a $0 balance. This was a debt that I received a discharge notice from Chase..a 1099C.. My point to first Chase and then to Lexington Law was that since the account was discharged last February (and taxes will be due on it), then it shouldn't also be showing as either late each month or as a collectable balance.

However, I can't tell if this means it truly is zero now, or is it just zero as a dispute is underway? Is it possible that I might lose this dispute and the balance would go back to reporting and my Fico would drop back down to the mid 540's?

if in fact, it is now reporting as $0, then I'm off to a pretty good start with Lexington Law...in fact, I'd happily pay $100 for a 17 point Fico increase as I try to get to that magic 620 number to get a mortgage....

Re: Lexington Law and deletions

Whitneyy — Thu, 20 Feb 2014 03:01:28 GMT

Hmm. Well to each its own. I thought about using them. But found this forum more helpful.

Re: Lexington Law and deletions

sup3rpat — Thu, 20 Feb 2014 03:26:25 GMT

+1, we can do our own work, get the same results, and save $100/month

Re: Lexington Law and deletions

baller4life — Thu, 20 Feb 2014 03:32:13 GMT

We can do the same ourselves for free. Free always sounds better to me! Got all my collections deleted(except one that's being a pain) from all 3 bureaus myself just by what I learned from this forum!!

Re: Lexington Law and deletions

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Feb 2014 03:33:38 GMT

@nycfico wrote:
So in following up with my original question...just got a pleasant surprise that my lowest fico score has jumped from 544 to 561...and the other two are now nearing 600. it appears that it's because of a charged off account from Chase is now reporting to be both in dispute, but also reporting a $0 balance. This was a debt that I received a discharge notice from Chase..a 1099C.. My point to first Chase and then to Lexington Law was that since the account was discharged last February (and taxes will be due on it), then it shouldn't also be showing as either late each month or as a collectable balance.

However, I can't tell if this means it truly is zero now, or is it just zero as a dispute is underway? Is it possible that I might lose this dispute and the balance would go back to reporting and my Fico would drop back down to the mid 540's?

if in fact, it is now reporting as $0, then I'm off to a pretty good start with Lexington Law...in fact, I'd happily pay $100 for a 17 point Fico increase as I try to get to that magic 620 number to get a mortgage....

While it might be reporting as 0 while in dispute, it can just as easily update to "verified" and appear back with a balance. I suppose in your case it could go either way though since you sent additional information showing that you were held liable for taxes on the amount that was left over.

Re: Lexington Law and deletions

klak11 — Sat, 22 Feb 2014 14:17:59 GMT

They send letters.

Re: Lexington Law and deletions

Anonymous — Wed, 05 Mar 2014 20:10:50 GMT

I hired Lexington Law two weeks ago,Feb-12-2014 and today March 5th i recieved my first case update,They have successfuly removed 6 civil judgements on my TU credit report. If you have the time you could do this yourself but if you are like me and do not have the patience for staying on top of sending the letters and replying to responses from collection agencies,LL is well worth the 100 bucks a month i pay them for there concord premiere service.

Re: Lexington Law and deletions

bluefoxing — Wed, 05 Mar 2014 20:20:11 GMT

I used Lexington Law in 2012. While I do find their platform very user friendly and easy to follow, I no longer find the $100/month I spent for a year worth it.

They successfully deleted over 16 items on my credit in a year. I was very excited. I stopped services with them only to find 70% of the items came back on my report just a few months later. After reading some of the threads here, I understand all they can do is dispute, dispute, dispute - and nothing else. There is no gaurantee of a permanent deletion.

I've also used eCredit Attorney. They are only $29 a month to send dispute letters. They have had 4 successful deletions, but those too just kept reappearing. I think your basically paying for them to continue to send letters in the hopes the collection doesnt respond and it falls off, only for it to be re-reported later and it comes around full circle again.

Those are just my experiences.