Many users of TurboDispute have submitted the results they received for their: Late Payments, Collections, Charge-Offs, Bankruptcies, Judgments, Liens, Inquiries, Foreclosures. We wanted to share few of these result letters with you so you can see how the credit bureaus respond and what to look for in the response.

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BASIC CREDIT REPAIR STRATEGY

The credit reporting agencies, (also called credit bureaus or credit repositories,) maintain credit files on almost every adult in the United States. Because credit bureaus are in the business of providing credit reports to lenders, they are not often as cooperative as you might expect when it comes to correcting inaccurate information in their databases. A credit bureau dispute involves disputing credit report items directly with the credit reporting agencies, specifically Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian.

This process does and can work for you, as long as you follow through and stay persistent and patient.

Credit Repair Steps

Step 1. Obtain and Review Your Credit Report.
Step 2. Analyze Your Credit Report.
Step 3. Challenge and Dispute items on Your Credit Report.
Step 4. Print and Mail the Dispute Letters to the Credit Bureaus. Using Registered or Certified Mail.
Step 5. Wait Patiently for the Credit Bureaus to Investigate Your Disputes.
Step 6. Repeat Steps 2 through 8 Until All Questionable Items are Resolved.
Step 7. What To Do If a Negative Item That Had Been Removed Suddenly Reappears

Step 1: Obtain and Review Your Credit Report
You may order your client’s free annual reports from each of the consumer reporting companies at the same time, or you can order from only one (1) or two (2). You can get one (1) free copy from each of the nationwide consumer reporting companies every 12 months.

The three (3) nationwide consumer reporting companies now use a single web site, toll-free telephone number, and mailing address for consumers to order free annual reports. The only authorized online source for your client’s free annual credit report from the three (3) nationwide consumer reporting companies is www.annualcredltreport.com.

Select one of the following options.

Option 1 (PAID)
Have your client signup for CreditCheckTotal or Privacy Guard and provide you their username and password.
These are paid credit monitoring service that starts with a fee of $1 with instant access, be sure to cancel with that company before the end of the free trial. We do recommend this option because our software will let you import the items from the credit report automatically into the software without having to manually enter them. Also, credit monitoring as the best way for the client to see the success of your work and monthly changes to the score.
To import an online credit report follow the following page.
1. Login into view online report.
2. To see the full report in one window click on “View Full report”
3. Point your mouse in an empty white area of the page and right click to select View Page Source and the source code will appear in area window.
(for more information please look into your browsers specific instruction on how to view the page source code.)
4. To copy the source code hold CTRL+A on the keyboard or from top menu Edit/Select all. (this will highlight all the text on the page)
5. Copy the source code CTRL+C on the keyboard or Edit/Copy
6. Paste the source code into the large text area below and click “Import”

Option 2 (FREE)
To review your client’s credit reports online:
Ask your client to visit www.annaulcreditreport.com and pull their credit report and provide you a copy of 3 in 1 credit report.

Each nationwide consumer reporting company may ask your client for information that only he or she would know, such as the amount of your monthly mortgage payment. Each company may ask for different information because the information each company has in their file may come from different sources.

Option 3 (FREE)
To order your client’s credit report by mail from Annual Credit Report:
Step1. Select your client and click on Credit Repair Wizard and pick option A
Step 2. Select credit bureau (Equifax, Experian or TransUnion)
Step 3. Print the form, sign in blue ink and mail it to the credit bureau address shown on top of the letter. ( Enclosed a copy of your client’s driver’s license and a utility bill with your request letter)

Annual Credit Report Request Service
P.O. Box 105281
Atlanta, GA 30348-5281

Option 4 (FREE)
If your client doesn’t qualify for free credit reports because they have already requested a free one this year through the FACTA program, find out if you can get a free credit report based on another reason.

To request by mail directly from Equifax, Experian or TransUnion:

Step1. Select your client and click on Credit Repair Wizard and pick option C
Step 1. Select credit bureau.
Step 2. Select the reason for your request.
Step 3. Print the request letter, sign in blue ink and mail it to the credit bureau address shown on top of the letter. ( Enclosed a copy of your client’s driver’s license and a utility bill with your request letter)

There are circumstances which will allow your client to receive free credit history reports.

• Your client is unemployed and intends to apply for employment within 60 days.
• Your client is living on public welfare assistance.
• Your client believes their credit report contains inaccurate information due to fraud or identity theft.
• Your client has been the subject of adverse action, such as denial of credit, housing or insurance, within the past 60 days.Note: Your client is entitled to receive a free report only from the credit bureau that provided the negative information resulting in denial of credit, housing, insurance, or employment, and not from all three (3) credit bureaus.

Otherwise, any of the three (3) consumer reporting companies may charge your client up to $10.00 for another copy of your report within a 12-month period.

According to www.annualcreditreport.com, “your reports will be mailed to you within 15 days. Please, allow 2-3 weeks for delivery.”

Note: The Standard of Free Annual Credit Reports DOES NOT include “scores”. The credit “scores” must be purchased directly from the credit bureaus or services. Credit Umbrella has no affiliation with the credit bureaus or Annual Credit Report Request Service

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Step 2: Analyze Your Credit Reports

Once you have your reports you need to review them carefully. Start with the identifying information such as your:

• Name
• Social Security Number
• Date of birth
• Current and previous address, and
• Employer information.

Next you need to review each account that is listed to be sure that all information is reporting correctly for the account

Finally you’ll want to review the inquiries section to see which companies have been looking at your credit reports. You’ll notice many names of companies with whom you have applied for credit. If there are companies that you don’t remember applying for credit with, contact them as soon as possible to make sure you have not become a victim of identity theft.

Inaccurate credit reports are the most common source of consumer complains. In September of 2005 the United States Public Interest Research Group reported that over 80% of Americans have inaccurate items reported on their credit reports. This costs consumers millions of extra dollars in increased rates each year. That means that 80 out of every 100 Americans have inaccuracies on their credit report and chances are that you might be one of those 80.

A credit report is a summary of one’s

• past credit history
• public records, and
• potential estimated credit worthiness.

Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax are the three (3) main national credit reporting agencies that maintain these records and data. Each of these credit bureaus works independently from others to gather information from lenders and creditors and other businesses with the intention of maintaining accurate and up-to-date consumer credit profiles. This information is then requested by other creditors, lenders, insurers, employers, and landlords to be used in evaluating an individual’s financial responsibility.

Summary of What to Look for in Your Credit History Report

Credit Reports seem rather cryptic at first, but once you see how they are laid out they will start to make sense.

After you’ve obtained a copy of your credit reports, you must review them carefully to identify any items that are negatively impacting your credit score.

The following list will help you identify items negatively impacting the credit score:

• Bankruptcy Filing Records
• Items included in Bankruptcy
• Charge-offs (Paid and Un-paid)
• Collections (Paid and Un-paid)
• Late Payments
• Negative Duplicate Accounts
• Negative Closed Accounts
• Inquiries
• Wage Earner Plan
• Foreclosures
• Judgements (Civil or Small Claims)
• Repossessions (Legal or Voluntary)
• Tax Liens (State or Federal)

Once you have identified all the items that are negatively impacting your credit score, highlight everything you believe to be:

• Incomplete
• Incorrect
• Inaccurate
• Questionable or Unknown
• Outdated (delinquent accounts more than seven (7) years old, bankruptcies and other public records more than 10 years old)
• Errors
• Misleading

You should also do the following:

• Make sure your personal information is correct.
• Make sure your accounts are listed correctly
• Make sure your credit lines are listed correctly
• Make sure you recognize all the accounts and you are sure they belong to you
• Make sure your balances are listed correctly
• If you close an account, it should say “Account closed BY CONSUMER”
• Make sure you recognize all the public records listed
• Make sure you recognize all the credit inquiries

You can also use payment history codes to identify derogatory items. The table below describes the codes.

Each item on your credit report carries a corresponding rating number that summarizes your account status.

You can challenge just about every negative item listed on your credit report that you believe is inaccurate, incomplete, misleading, or outdated and should be removed or corrected.

Credit bureaus have 30 days to investigate your request and make changes on your credit report. If the credit bureau cannot verify that a credit item is accurate and timely, it must be removed from your credit report.

Your credit reports follow you throughout your life and can help you greatly – or hurt you – so review them carefully!

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Step 3: Challenge and Dispute Items on Your Credit Report

The first thing you should understand is that you can challenge just about every inaccurate negative item listed on your credit report that you believe is misleading, inaccurate, untimely or questionable, and should be verified and removed or corrected.

Enter each questionable negative item into TurboDispute using Add Item, Quick Item Add or Import Credit Report.

Once you have all the items entered or imported click on Create Dispute Letters and follow the steps:

• Step 1. Select item(s) that you are you disputing.
• Step 2. For each bureau select the dispute letter and click Next.
• Step 3. Click on Save All
• Step 4. Sign each dispute letter in blue ink and mail it to the credit bureau address shown on top of the letter.

Enclose a copy of your client’s driver’s license and a copy of a utility bill with your dispute letter.

Make certain that all information is current and accurate, including the Personal Identification information (address, Social Security Number, etc.).

You don’t need much documentation to dispute a questionable item on your client’s report. The Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1996 puts the burden of proof on the shoulders of the credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion) and your creditors. The consumers do not have to prove their dispute, so documentation is not legally required to challenge items on your credit reports with the credit bureaus.
Note: Do not send multiple copies of the same dispute to one credit bureau within a 30-day period. They may consider your dispute to be a duplicate and terminate their investigation.

SAMPLE DISPUTE LETTER:

DATE:[TodaysDate] [RecipientName] [RecipientAddressLine1] [RecipientAddressLine2] [RecipientCityStateZipCode]

RE:[Dispute Category] [Report Number]

To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing today to request that the following inaccurate and incorrect item be investigated and removed from my Credit Report.

Pursuant to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, I am asking that you complete the verification within 30 days.

[Dispute Category] Account Name: [Account Name] Account Number: [Account Number] [Dispute Instructions]

Please forward an updated copy of my Credit Report when your investigation and changes have been completed.

Also, I will need you to inform me in writing of the results of your investigation. I appreciate your help and assistance in getting my Credit Report corrected.

Sincerely,

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Signature

[Your First Name] [Your Last Name] SS#: [Your Social Security Number] DOB: [Your Date of Birth] [YourAddressLine1] [Your City, State and Zip Code]

Step 4: Print and Mail Dispute Letters to Credit Bureaus

Print and send all your dispute letters to the credit bureau by Registered or Certified Mail. By doing so you can create some leverage with the credit bureaus if and when they don’t respond within the time frame required by law. When the credit bureau receives your report and the information in question, they are required to investigate and ADVISE YOU of the results of their investigation. They must do this free of charge. Accurate documentation proving that your dispute letters were mailed and received are a critical step for your successful credit repair.

Step 5: Wait Patiently for Credit Bureaus to Investigate Your Disputes

According to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, once the credit bureau receives your dispute letter they are obligated to perform an investigation and all consumers’ disputes musts be resolved by the credit reporting agencies with 30 days (it may take up to 60 days to receive an updated credit report from the day you send the bureaus a dispute letter).

In other words, credit bureaus have 30 days to investigate your request to verify and make changes on your client’s credit report, inform your client in writing of their investigation results with five (5) days of its completion and send you a copy of your updated credit (if it was requested).

The credit bureau will send your client a written notice of the results of disputed items. Ask you, clients, to forward all the correspondence they receive to you. The letter will list the item that was disputed, a description of the item (such as the account number or reference number), and will show the results – whether it was DELETED, CORRECTED, ADJUSTED, VERIFIED or if there is more information listed below.

Please remember that when you receive your clients updated your client’s results in TurboDispute by clicking on Add Results. Review the accounts that you have disputed so you will be able to determine which items are still remaining on your credit and dispute them again if you believe they should not be there or have to be corrected.

Consumers reported that sometimes a creditor may claim that they can’t find an account without more information or that the dispute is incomplete. These letters request a copy of your recent utility bill, a complete account number, or even a copy of your credit report. However, creditors should be able to access your accounts with just a name, Social Security Number, and the address that was provided on your dispute letter. In any case, please make a copy of this letter and respond to the credit bureaus directly.

Consumers also reported that sometimes credit bureaus (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion) might send out a letter that requests that you verify your identity before THEY will process the request. They use this stall tactic in the name of “keeping your information secure” or “preventing identity theft”. If you get this letter, don’t be concerned! Simply send the information they requested, and they should proceed with the dispute.

Another letter consumers reported receiving is a request to send legal documents such as court papers, letters from creditors, etc.
You don’t need much documentation to dispute a questionable item on your report. The Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1996 puts the burden of proof on the shoulders of the credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion) and your creditors. Consumers do not have to prove their dispute, so documentation is not legally required to challenge items on your credit reports with the credit bureaus.

Consumers also reported that they are often encouraged to write a Consumer Statement of 100 words or less and send it to them.
A potential creditor will probably never read it, since they are more interested in your credit score than your personal explanation!

Please keep in mind that even after disputing, you are not guaranteed of any specific results and may have to try again to remove all the inaccurate negative items from your report. The persistence you show with your credit bureau letters will help you achieve the goal of correcting and maintaining your client’s credit reports.

Step 6: Repeat Steps 2 through 8 Until All Questionable Items are Resolved

When you get your client’s updated credit report back from the credit bureaus, they will summarize what changed on the report in response to your dispute letters. Compare this list to your own notes or to your most recent credit report. In most cases, the results of each item will have been resolved in one of a few ways.

If the listing is not mentioned in their results list, you may have neglected to include it, or your request was not sufficiently clear. Either way, you will need to dispute the item again in your next dispute letter. Because the credit bureaus are obligated to respond in writing within 30 days, it is highly unlikely that they are simply not going to respond.

In some cases, the disputed item may be listed as investigated, but verify. In this situation, the credit bureaus may simply write “Item Verified.”

If the account does come back as “Verified,” you can try disputing the listing again at a future time. Remember, if the creditor does not respond to the credit bureau at all, this is the same as the listing being unverifiable. In that case, the negative listing will now show up as a positive listing, or it will be deleted from your credit report altogether. Either way, it works in your favor.

Because federal law requires that the credit bureaus accept any proof you may submit and forward any documentation you provide on to your creditor for consideration, be sure to send another follow-up letter along with any and all documentation that you can, especially if you didn’t do it the first time. Dispute Manager includes many follow-up letters for requesting their “Method of Verification” which can be used to request the credit bureau to notify you in writing how the item was verified.

Important: The goal is to never give up. Threats won’t work, but you can become more insistent. Once you send a letter, wait for a response. They are required to respond to you in 30 days. However, if you call to follow up before the 30 days has gone by, their time limit starts over and they can make you wait another 30 days.

It also helps to take new and innovative approaches. If the credit bureaus come across as a consumer who has been wronged due to circumstances beyond their control, they might be more sympathetic and offer a timely response. Whatever you do, don’t overload the credit bureaus with the same disputes. This is not smart and you must exercise your patience and wait for their response. Otherwise, the dispute can be deemed frivolous and the credit bureau is then under no legal obligation to take action. Credit repair takes time and patience. A good rule of thumb is to wait 60 days between disputes of the same listing.

It also helps to take new and innovative approaches. If the Credit Bureaus come across as a consumer who has been wronged due to circumstances beyond their control, the Credit Bureaus might be more sympathetic and offer a timely response. Whatever you do, don’t overload the Credit Bureaus with the same disputes. This is foolish and counterproductive, even if you do use a different reason in your dispute. So while you need to change the reason for the dispute each time you submit, you also must exercise your patience and wait for their response. Otherwise, the dispute can be deemed frivolous and the Credit Bureau is then under no legal obligation to take action. Credit repair takes time and patience. A good rule of thumb is to wait 60 days between disputes of the same listing and always use a different reason for disputing.

8. Specialized Circumstances and Unique Strategies
Depending on the type of listing, you may want to vary your approach.

Charge Off
For example, if you have a “Charge Off,” you can dispute the information within this listing, such as the date the account was opened, the amount owed, or the high balance. Find one thing that is inaccurate and you can get the entire item removed from your Credit Report.

Judgments
With a judgment, if you were never served, you can possibly have it voided.?You can dispute the information within this listing with “I have never been served ­please remove” dispute instruction.

Collections
While many people are afraid of collections, they are actually one of the easiest of listings to remove because Collection Agencies usually have poor documentation, they are not actually authorized or licensed to collect, and they have very little money vested in the collection. Go to Collections Dispute section of the Dispute Manager and use one of the many “Request of validation” letters.

In light of these circumstances, we have a few techniques that we can recommend.

1. Documentation that Proves a Debt Is Valid
The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act mandates that the Collection Agency provide documentation that the debt is valid. After you write a letter to the Collection Agency, and they don’t respond, you can follow up with a threat to take legal action because of their non­responsiveness. While this may seem rather aggressive, it is highly effective.

2. Send Dispute Letters to the Credit Bureaus
Of all the approaches, this is the most basic. Simply mail a letter to the Credit Bureaus requesting an investigation of a collection on your Credit Report.

3. FCRA 623 Disputes
Section 623 of the Fair Credit Reporting Act allows Consumers to dispute a negative listing directly with the company reporting it on their Credit Report. The Consumer is simply requesting an investigation of the account, and the Creditor is required by law to respond within 30 days. In order to use this technique successfully, you must have first disputed the negative information on your Credit Report with the Credit Bureaus. Since most Collection Agencies will not have any documentation to back up their reports, this tends to be a very effective technique as well.

4. Pay for Deletion
If you have an account in collections for $500 or less, like medical or utility bills, you can offer to pay the debt, as long as the Collection Agency agrees to remove the listing from your Credit Report.?5.Settling a Significant Debt?If you have an account in collections for an amount of $1,000 or more, you might be best served to negotiate with the Collection Agency to reduce the amount of the debt to an amount that you would agree to pay in one lump sum, as long as they remove the listing from your Credit Report.

Original Creditors

FACTA’s “Early Warning” Notice?Under the statutes of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, Creditors must notify you that they have recently placed negative information on your Credit Report. If they haven’t notified you, they are in violation of this legal statute and you can oftentimes use this as leverage to get them to remove the negative item from your Credit Report.?To help counter identity theft, FACTA now requires Creditors to provide an “Early Warning Notice” which could alert you that something is wrong with your particular account. Even still, it’s always a good practice to monitor one’s own Credit Reports on a regular basis.

Negative Information Notification
Another concept worth mentioning in the FACTA regulations is the Negative Information Notification, (covered in Section 623(A)(7) and designed to help prevent identity theft. Any financial institution that extends credit and furnishes negative information about you to a Credit Bureau, must notify you beforehand, and no later than 30 days. Examples of negative information would be late, missed or partial payments as well as other defaults on an account.

Q. Does the Negative Information Notification only apply to my Bank?
A. No. Under the Gramm­Leach­Bliley Act, the reference to a “financial institution” includes Banks, Collection Agencies and any Merchants that extend credit.

Q. If I have an account that is delinquent, how often will I receive a notice?
A. You will only receive one notice per each delinquent account. However, if your account continues to be delinquent, the financial institution can continue to report negative information, as long as they’ve notified you the first time within the legal limitations. This would be before they send their negative information or within 30 days after the first late payment has been reported.

Q. Will the notice arrive as a “Registered Letter” or something similar?
A. FACTA requires all financial institutions to provide you this notice along with “any notice of default, any billing statement, or any other materials provided to [you].” So, no, you probably won’t receive a “Registered Letter.” However, FACTA also states that the notice must be “clear and conspicuous,” and not hidden within the “Truth in Lending” notice that you received upon opening a new account.

Q. What does the Negative Information Notification look like?
A. Congress directed the Federal Reserve Board to write sample notifications that are short and to the point. Below is an example of a notification before negative information is reported.?“We may report information about your account to Credit Bureaus. Late payments, missed payments, or other defaults on your account may be reflected in your Credit Report.”?Below is an example of a notification after negative information has been reported.?“We have told a Credit Bureau about a late payment, missed payment or other default on your account. This information may be reflected in your Credit Report.”

Q. What if I never receive this notification?
A. Per the statutes in the FCRA, if the original Creditor does not notify you of this negative information, you may request to have this information removed or take legal action against them for an amount of $1,000.

Let’s say you successfully removed a negative item from your Credit Report. Weeks later, you receive a letter in the mail from a Credit Bureau stating that the negative item has been reinstated on your Credit Report.

Because of the new credit laws which require Credit Bureaus to investigate and resolve your disputes within 30 days, they will sometimes remove the negative information temporarily until they get the information verified as true. Then they will reinstate any information verified to be true and notify you of this in writing, all of which is legal.

Just know that if they do not notify you in writing, it is an instant violation of the FCRA. You would then be eligible for a $1,000 fine, payable to you by the Credit Bureau at fault, as well as a successful removal of that negative item.

1. Disputing inaccurate negative items with the original creditor first.
Before you do anything else, you should always dispute your inaccurate negative items with the credit bureau first to expedite the process of getting those items removed from your credit report. Statistics show that 15 to 25 percent of all inaccurate items disputed in your first attempt could be deleted. The strategy here is to tackle the easy items first and concentrate on the more complicated items later.
2. Neglecting to properly document all communication
You should keep a careful and accurate record of the dates and times you:

• send a letter
• receive a letter, or
• speak to an individual regarding your credit repair.

Be sure to send all dispute letters by Certified Mail with a Return Receipt Requested.

Keep your records organized. Easy access to records you may need to prove your case can be a time saver.

When you are disputing items with the credit bureau, accurate documentation is critical to your success. The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) states that credit bureaus have up to 30 days to respond to you with the results of their investigation of your dispute. If you do not receive a response within 30 days they should remove the disputed item.

3. Using the online disputing service provided on credit bureau websites.
Although it may seem convenient, it may not be in your best interest to use the online disputing service provided on credit bureau websites. If you dispute items online on a credit bureau website, you will not have any written records or return receipts documenting your dispute. Credit bureaus use a standard automatic response program that generates a standard computer code and in most cases the furnisher is not contacted about the dispute.

4. Not disputing a listing with the original creditor after disputing it with the credit bureau.
You can dispute questionable negative listings with the Information Furnisher. An Information Furnisher is the original creditor, which can be defined as any entity that has reported information to the credit bureaus about you.

Disputing with an Original Creditor
Much like you would with a credit bureau, you can dispute information listed on your credit report by the original creditor.

The original creditor must take the following steps.

• They must perform an investigation of the specific dispute.
• They must respond within 30 days.
• If their investigation proves that the item listed is in fact inaccurate, they must notify the credit bureaus of their mistake and request that it be corrected immediately.

Filing a proper and documented dispute with credit bureaus is crucial to your success. By doing so, you will place the burden of proof in the hands of the original creditor. This means you must wait for the results of your dispute from the credit bureaus before taking any further action.

Important Reminder
It is crucial to your success that you dispute all inaccurate negative items listed by a creditor with the credit bureau first. Also, whenever you write to the original creditor, make sure you are requesting an investigation and not just a verification of the negative item.

5. Throwing In the Towel and Quitting Too Soon.
For most people new to the credit repair process, this sequence of events can appear confusing, complicated and at times, overwhelming. The best advice is to take baby steps and accomplish a little every day. Once you’ve mailed your Dispute Letters, most people shouldn’t spend more than an hour or 2 a month on this process. When you consider all the advantages there are to a high Credit Score, it makes those few hours of work seem like a very wise investment of your time.

Here are some of the basic credit terms you’ll need to know and understand.

Advance-fee loan
A loan calculated so that all the finance charges and other creditor expenses are deducted before the consumer receives the principal.

APR (Annual Percentage Rate)
The cost of credit at a yearly rate. Knowing the APR allows you to effectively compare loans, even when they are structured differently.

Balloon Payment
A final payment at the end of a loan term that is considerably larger than the regular periodic payments.

Bankruptcy
A Bankruptcy is an official legal declaration that one is unable to pay their debts, and under the law is seeking legal protection from creditors. There are different types of Bankruptcy protection agreements, the most common of which are called Chapter 7 and Chapter 13. Many people unnecessarily rush into Bankruptcy without having all of the facts. Congress has recently favored creditors by passing legislation making Bankruptcy protection more difficult for the average american. A Bankruptcy is the single most damaging listing a credit report can show, much like a nuclear bomb going off on your credit report. CreditUnbrella Software has successfully disputed thousands and thousands of Bankruptcies, both chapter 7 and 13.

Cash Advance
A cash loan taken out on a credit card. Interest for cash advances is usually higher than it is for purchases, a transaction fee may apply, and the grace period may be waived.

Charge Off
When a creditor sells a delinquent account to an independent collection agency, the account is considered ‘charged-off’ by the creditor. Your credit report will label the account as a ‘Charge-Off’. The collection agency will then typically report a Collection Account to your credit report as well. The creditor will cease all attempts to collect on the account because they no longer own the debt. Usually a creditor then will seek to claim the remaining unpaid debt against their taxes as a business loss. Charge-offs are extremely bad for your credit score and usually occur with unsecured loans such as credit card debt. CreditUnbrella Software has successfully disputed thousands and thousands of Charge-Offs.

Collection Account
Typically, an account goes into collections after it has gone unpaid for 90 days or more. Usually the creditor will enlist the help of an independent collection agency after their in-house attempts to collect on the account have failed. Sometimes a creditor may even sell the account to a collection agency for a fraction of the amount owed. The collection agency is then entitled to 100% of the money they receive and will report a separate Collection Account to your credit report to represent their effort. Note: the same account will therefore be listed twice on your report – once by the creditor, and again by the collection agency. After being sold by the creditor the same account may be sold again and again from one collection agency to another and each will usually register a new collection account on your credit report. You have substantial legal protection to shield you from the harassment of collection agencies.

Consolidation Loan
A loan usually obtained for the purpose of reducing the amount of the payments of bills owing by consolidating the bills into one loan payment. The consumer pays off several bills with the proceeds from one loan and is left with one consolidated monthly payment.

Credit
The promise to pay in the future in order to buy or borrow in the present. The right to defer payment of debt.

Credit Bureau
A credit bureau keeps a record of your credit history for any card or loan issuer to review when considering your application for credit. The three major credit-reporting agencies in the United States are Equifax, Experian (formerly TRW) and Trans Union.

Credit Card
Any card, plate, or coupon book that may be used repeatedly to borrow money or buy goods and services on credit.

Credit Counseling
Advice given by professional counselors to people about how to use credit responsibly and how to get out of serious debt.

Credit History
Record of how a consumer has paid credit accounts in the past, used as a guide to determine whether the consumer is likely to pay accounts on time in the future.

Credit Limit
The maximum amount of money you can charge on a particular credit account.

Credit Report
A summary of your recent credit history plus additional facts about you, including your age, address, marital status, employment history and other details that will help creditors judge your creditworthiness.

Credit Score
A computer-generated number, based on a statistical model, that summarizes an individual’s credit record and predicts the likelihood that a borrower will repay future obligations.

Daily Periodic Rate
The daily periodic rate is your annual interest rate expressed on a daily basis. It equals 1/365th of your annual percentage rate

Deferred Payment
Payment put off to a future date or extended over a period of time. Watch out for skip-a-month offers. Interest still accumulates when you skip a month.

Delinquent
A failure to deliver even the minimum payment on a loan or debt payment on or before the time agreed. Accounts are often referred to as 30, 60, 90 or 120 days delinquent because most lenders have monthly payment cycles.

Finance Charge
The total dollar amount paid to get credit.

Fixed Rate
A traditional approach to determining the finance charge payable on an extension of credit. A predetermined and certain rate of interest is applied to the principal.

Foreclosures
A legal action that terminates all ownership rights in a home when the home buyer fails to make the mortgage payments or is otherwise in default under the terms of the mortgage. A Foreclosure is when a creditor (usually a bank or mortgage company) uses the legal system to attempt to force the sale of property in order to liquidate the equity in the property to satisfy a debt. Foreclosures most commonly occur on real estate after a number of payments have been missed. Foreclosures have been occurring recently in record numbers throughout the United States, with millions more expected over the next few years. Questionable lending practices and the sub-prime mortgage industry have been chiefly to blame for the foreclosure epidemic throughout the US.

Garnishment
Legal process whereas a creditor has obtained judgment on a debt may obtain full or partial payment by seizure of a portion of a debtor’s assets (wages, bank account, etc…).

Grace Period
The period allowed to avoid any finance charges by paying off the balance in full before the due date.

Home Equity Loan
A loan based on the difference of the amount you own on your home, and the home’s current market value.

Inquiry
Inquiries are requests made to obtain information about your credit report and/or credit score. ‘Hard’ inquiries are made by creditors or potential creditors and can damage your score for up to a year, and then are supposed to simply show on the report for another year after that. ‘Soft’ inquiries are usually caused by you checking your own report, or by what are considered ‘non-creditor entities’ such as employers, landlords, credit bureaus, credit monitoring services, etc. A soft inquiry is one that does not affect your score.

Installment account
A type of credit where a consumer signs a contract to repay a fixed amount in equal payments over a specific period of time. Examples include car loans, furniture loans and personal loans.

Interest
The cost of borrowing or lending money, usually a percentage of the amount borrowed or loaned.

Joint Account
Credit accounts held or owned by two or more persons. In the case of a joint account, all parties are held equally responsible and liable for payment under the terms and conditions of the loan contract.

Judgment
The official court decision of an action or suit. This public record may be listed on your credit report in matters of money and debts owed. When a creditor charges-off debt and sells it to a collection agency, sometimes the collection agency will seek a judgment against you in court. If a collection agency receives a judgment against you they sometimes will look to seize assets of yours to repay the debt owed. Each state has varying limits to what someone with a judgment against you may seize under a court ordered writ of execution.

Late Payment
The definition of a Late Payment varies between creditors and the bureaus. Typically for creditors when a payment is made past the defined due date it is considered late. For bureaus, a payment is considered late when it is made 30 days or more after the creditor due date. Bureaus track the severity of late payments as to whether they were made more than 30 days after the due date, more than 60 days past the due date, or more than 90 days past the due date.

Lien
A legal hold or claim of one person on the property of another as security for a debt or charge. The right given by law to satisfy debt. Sometimes a creditor or collection agency will make a claim against property such as real estate or automobiles as a way of securing equity in that property for money owed them. Loans that are ‘secured’ involve property, called collateral, that, from the outset, hold liens until the debt is paid. ‘Unsecured’ loans do not typically involve liens on collateralized property. Collection agencies that receive judgments against you may try to lien property that is not ‘judgment-proof’ in an effort to collect money when you sell that property.

Line of credit
A preauthorize d amount of credit offered to an individual, business or institution that is commonly secured against an asset such as a home (real estate).

Monthly periodic rate
The rate of interest per month, calculated by dividing the annual percentage rate (APR) by 12.

Mortgage
A lien or claim against real property given by the buyer to the lender as security for money borrowed. First Mortgage-or “primary” mortgage-has priority over the claims of subsequent lenders for the same property.

Mortgagee
The one receiving the mortgage (usually a financial institution).

Mortgagor
The one granting a mortgage on his or her property. The borrower.

Open 30-day account
A type of credit where a consumer promises to repay the full balance owed each month. Examples include local businesses, travel and entertainment charge cards.

Past due
When you do not make at least the minimum payment on time, your account is considered past due.

Periodic rate
The interest rate described in relation to a specific amount of time. For example, the monthly periodic rate is the cost of credit per month; the daily periodic rate is the cost of credit per day.

Permissible Purposes
As defined in section 604 of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, only the named reasons for requesting a credit report are deemed “permissible.” Requests not meeting these criteria must be denied.

Points
Finance charges paid by the borrower at the beginning of a loan in addition to monthly interest; each point equals one percent of the loan amount.

Prepayment penalty
Charges imposed by some lenders as a penalty for paying off a loan earlier than its original payoff date. Prepayment penalties are common among some of the sub-prime and/or predatory lending loan products.

Prime rate
The interest rate banks charge for loans to their biggest and highest-rated customers. The prime rate changes based on the demand for money and the rate the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank charges to its member banks. It is used as a major economic indicator.

Principal
The outstanding balance of a loan, exclusive of interest and other charges.

Promotional Inquiry
A type of soft inquiry made to your credit report for the purpose of disclosing that a credit report was furnished in connection with a pre-approved offer. If your credit history matches a creditor’s criteria, that creditor gets only limited information not your full credit report.

Repossession
Forced, or voluntary surrender of merchandise as a result of the customer’s failure to pay as promised. There are several types and descriptions of repossession actions. On a loan secured by collateral such as an automobile or other vehicle, a repossession occurs when a creditor seizes the item securing the loan. If the loan is not brought current, the creditor typically will see the item to pay off the loan or a fraction of the amount owed. If the loan is not satisfied by the sale, a creditor will usually seek a judgment for or hire a collection agency to collect the remaining balance.

Revolving credit
A credit agreement that allows consumers to pay all or part of the outstanding balance on a loan or credit card. As credit is paid off, it becomes available again to use for another purchase or cash advance.

Secured loan
A loan backed by collateral and secured against something tangible such as a home (real estate).

Tax Lien
A claim against assets filed by a taxing authority against property of a person who owes back taxes.

Trade line
A term used in the credit industry for an account listed on your credit report.

Unsecured loan
A loan based on a consumer’s promise to pay, without savings or other collateral as a guarantee.

Variable Rate
A variable rate agreement, as distinguished from a fixed rate agreement, calls for an interest rate that may fluctuate over the life of the loan. The rate is often tied to an index that reflects changes in market rates of interest. A fluctuation in the rate causes changes in either the payments or the length of the loan term. Limits are often placed on the degree to which the interest rate or the payments can vary.

Adding Good Credit – The quickest way to add good credit to your credit reports is to check and see if an account is on your credit report but only showing on 1 of the credit reports and not all 3. You can call this company (look at the back of the credit report for the phone number or you can look on the back of your credit card), and ask them to add it to the other 2 credit report(s). They will tell you whether they can or can’t. If they say they can’t do this for you, ask why. For the most part, the creditor pays each of the credit bureaus (as a subscriber) to place information on your credit report. They may only pay one, two or all three. If the company is a large one, such as Sears, then they usually pay all three credit bureaus to put it on each of the credit reports. You can’t force them to add it to the other credit bureaus if they are not a subscriber (pay the credit bureaus).

Seek Easy Credit – Many stores extend credit without tremendous regard for the credit standing of the applicant. These stores usually can be found in industries with small products or traditionally high mark-ups. Here is a list of creditors who often will extend credit to those without much credit history: Jewelry Stores, Furniture Stores, Appliance Stores, Gasoline Companies, Tire Stores and “Buy Here/Pay Here” auto dealerships. Make sure that these companies do report to the credit bureaus before applying for credit with them).

Adding a New Trade Line Item – You can do this by going to your local credit union or bank (if you are in Arizona, try *Arizona State Credit Union) and open a “Shared Secured Loan”. This requires a deposit of only $305 (can go upto $1005) to open and does not require having good credit (You must not be in ‘ChexSystems’ to be able to do this with AZ State CU). Within 10 minutes, you will receive $300 (to $1000) back of their money. You will make small monthly payments on this with a very low interest rate of about 3.75%. Payments are approx. $20-$22/mo. This will appear on your credit report within 2 to 3 weeks under all 3 credit bureaus*. This is a fantastic way of creating or establishing new credit. Another place you can try is Compass Bank (Arizona & a few other states). They have a secured installment loan that will be similar to the one above, but will require $2,500 down, charging a little more interest (8%-11%) but can be paid off at any time without pre-payment penalties. This will go on all 3 of your credit reports within a few days to a few weeks.

Piggybacking – Another quick way to add good credit is to piggyback on to someone else’s credit. You can do this by finding someone such as a family member or a friend to add your name to one of (or more) credit cards that they have had for a few years. Please follow the criteria below for the best results:

• Have the person who is adding you on to one or more of their accounts as an “authorized user” only
• Make sure that the account is in good standing, meaning there has never been any late payments made on the account for the entire credit history
• Add your name to accounts that have been opened for more than 1 year. The older the account, the better it is for you and your credit. (Example: if you are added to your mother’s Sears account, and she has had that account for 5 years, it will now show this account on your credit report that you have had it for 5 years which really helps boost your credit scores up high). Terrific? Yes! Legal? Yes!
• The best and most ideal way to do this is to be added to accounts that are between $500 and $5,000. You really don’t want to be added to a $20,000 credit card, because this will go against your debt to income ratio when applying for a home/mortgage, etc. Meaning the payment on this account will factor in to your monthly debt that shows you have to pay every month even if your mother pays it.

Positives and Negatives to Piggybacking…

Positives

• It helps someone to establish credit almost overnight. (It could take possibly 2 to 4 weeks for the company to report it to the credit bureaus. You could ask to what credit bureaus they report to).
• The trade line items can stay on your credit report for a long time or indefinitely.
• It will help boost your credit scores up if you don’t have any credit or if you have low credit scores.
• The person who is the main card holder: it is a nice jester that someone has helped you to improve your credit. A big “Thank You” is recommended.
• It does not hurt the main card holder, nor does it prevent them from obtaining or applying for credit. They have already had this account in their name and it appears on their credit report.
• Suggest to the main card holder that when the new credit card arrives in the mail to cut it up. You don’t even need to use it.
• Make sure that the balance on the credit card is or keeps below at least 50% of the limit.

Negatives

• If the main card holder makes a late payment or more, then it will show up on your credit report as having late payments. So you have to trust who you are adding your name to their account.

If the main card holder skips out and doesn’t pay or if they pass away with no significant other to pay off the debt, then the creditor will come after you to pay the balance so you don’t want to be added to a high limit credit card.

This process is fully legal. Negotiating debt can save you hundreds to thousands of dollars! If you are not going to buy a vehicle, home or refinance your current home within 1 year, then you are in a good position to negotiate your debt.

Below is a list of the pros and cons of negotiating your debt.

Positives
1. You can save a large amount of money.
2. It is an alternative to bankruptcy and long term debt consolidation loans.
3. It will reduce your personal, business and medical debt.
4. It is one of the quickest and most sensible ways to reduce unsecured debt when compared to other debt management/consolidation options.
Negatives
1. Your credit report will show negative remarks and the credit scores will go down, but you can do credit repair to delete or correct items to improve the credit scores.
2. You have to stop paying on your credit cards for a few months
3. You will start getting letters and collection phone calls but can stop the calls with a “Do not call” letter. You still want them to send the letters so you know what is going on with your accounts.
4. When it comes time to negotiate with your creditors (in a few months), you will need to have the funds available to pay off the negotiated amount. They will not negotiate your debt down 50% or more AND take monthly payments.
Step by Step Process in Negotiating Your Debt:

1. Send your creditor a ‘Do Not Call letter’*. You can soften this letter up by adding in a first line to say…. “Because of my (health) or (work schedule) or (current traveling schedule), I request that you stop calling me by telephone and only contact me by regular postal mail”.

2. Stop paying the payments on your credit cards. If you have several credit cards, you can stagger the months you stop paying them.

3. The phone calls will start if you haven’t given them a ‘Do Not Call’ letter. Letters will continue to arrive at least once per month if not more. Just file these into separate file folders labeled with the credit card company for each. This will keep you organized and stress free!

4. Keep opening all incoming mail to make sure you are aware of what the creditors are saying. Early letters will contain offers to settle the debt. As time goes by the letters will get progressively harsher. The credit card companies will threaten to turn your account over to an outside collection agency or an attorney if the debt is not paid by a certain date. Please do not be alarmed as this is a strategic tactic to intimidate you into paying the debt. Most people will be concerned and wondering if they are doing the right thing. Keep in mind; you can negotiate with them at any time. Remember, the longer you wait to negotiate, the more money you will have in YOUR pocket!

5. Approximately 6 to 9 months is when you want to start negotiating with your credit card companies (creditors). There is no set rule that tells you what percentage of the total debt to offer after a certain period of time. Each creditor is different and has different guidelines.

(One creditor may negotiate your debt down to 50% of the total debt in 6 months when the next creditor will only negotiate the debt down to 70%).

6. Within a few months of the last payment made to your creditor, they will turn the debt over to a collection agency (or an attorney), and you receive a collection letter. PLEASE look for these as they may appear as junk mail. You want to respond to these collection letters within 30 days with a ‘Debt Validation’ letter (DVL). THIS IS A MUST!!! If you do not, a new ‘negative’ item will appear on your credit report for the same debt as the original creditor. By sending the collection agency/attorney the DVL, you will: 1. Keep the debt from appearing on your credit reports twice; 2. Have the collection agency/attorney taking time to jump through hoops to follow federal law (the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act); 3. Stop the collection agency/attorney from calling and harassing you and; 4. Buy you some negotiating time. Many collection agencies or attornies will not want to “Validate the Debt” as they do not want to deal with an educated consumer! Most will not respond to your request for validation and will turn it back over to the original creditor. It is important for you to know that by law (FDCPA), they cannot: harass or abuse you on the phone, refuse to validate the debt, or add a negative item on your credit report.
7. Once you are ready to negotiate your debt, start by knowing exactly what you want to pay your creditor. Begin negotiating for less than that. For example: The Credit Card balance is $10,000. The most you want to pay is $3,000. Start the negotiations at $2,000. This would be in approximately the 7th or 8th month. Another example: $50,000 credit card debt. The most you will pay is $9,000. Start negotiating at $4,000.

8. When negotiating your debt on the phone with your original creditor or collection agency/attorney, you always want to say that you are borrowing the money. Never say that you have it. (Keep calls short and sweet if possible. Never get into a shouting match or curse at them). Here is an example of what I have used in the past that generally works:

“Hello, my name is Suzi Smith and my account number is #123456789. I would like to settle my debt with your company. Because of my (health;
financial situation; job situation), I can borrow the money from my (mother; friend)”.
• They may ask you questions, but DO NOT give them any information. Just stick to your script. If you need to write it down before calling, please do so.
• Remember, they are experts at pressuring you into giving them your credit card or bank account information. Please DO NOT give them any information to help them to collect from you.
• It may take more than one phone call to negotiate your debt. The more you drag them out, the better it is for you and the more money you save. They will try to pressure you into paying them while you are on the phone by asking you for your credit card, or bank account info.
• Stand your ground. DO NOT let them pressure you into revealing too much information. If they persist end the call with – “I’m sorry, I don’t have $3,000. I only can borrow $2,000.”
• If they keep you on the phone, you can use the following phrases… “I don’t know what else to do. I have no money; I can’t even pay my mortgage/rent, etc. I guess I am going to have to file for a bankruptcy”. Then be quiet and wait for their response.

Mentioning bankruptcy will get their attention! More than likely they will ask you to hold while they talk to their supervisor to get an approval for the $2,000. If they ask you if they can call you back, you can give them your number, or you can set up a time when you can call them.

If it takes a few phone calls, then so be it. It will show them that you are not going to budge and give in to their request for more money. If they don’t come back with an offer that is acceptable to you, state your case again by using the following…. “Well, that is all I can pay. Please contact me in writing only when you are willing to take the $2,000.” Wait a week or two and call them back to see if they will accept your offer.

9. If you negotiate your debt in writing, please see the ‘Negotiated Letter’* as an example to
use. Keep in mind; you may not get a response back. Mark the date on your calendar when you sent the negotiated letter and re-send the same letter to them if you do not get a response in 2 weeks.

If they decide to take your offer, have them fax or email you a ‘Settlement Letter’ stating that they will take the $2,000 settlement for the $10,000 debt from Sears if paid by the _____ day. (Allow at least 4 or more days so you can get a ‘Certified Check’ out in the mail (overnight) that day or the next to them. Read their settlement letter thoroughly.

• Sometimes they will say that you have to get them the money by the next day or it will not be ‘settled’ and it will be considered an initial payment. WATCH THIS CLOSELY!
• You aren’t loosing anything by waiting or dragging the negotiating out.
• Remember, they still CANNOT call you unless you allow it.
• If it will save you significant money, drag it out a few weeks! Always control the conversation; always say that “I am borrowing the money” and get what ever they agree to in writing. If not, DO NOT pay them!
• Try to negotiate your debt before it gets to a collection attorney. This may happen after the 1st or 2nd collection agency cannot collect from you. The purpose is to negotiate your debt before you receive a ‘Summons’ to go to court. NO, you don’t have to go to court, but you DO need to respond to a ‘Civil Summons Complaint’ if served upon you. If you do not respond to it within 20 days, the Plaintiff (original creditor and its attorney) will receive a Judgment on you by default. If they receive a judgment, they can garnish wages; attach money in your bank account or lien property.
• Good luck! With some patience, determination and perseverance you will have negotiated your debt and saved yourself a lot of money!
• Important – at any time during the negotiating process or after it, make sure that you repair your credit/credit reports. This is crucial for your financial future!

Credit Repair Laws that everyone should know before disputing any questionable items from their Credit report.

THREE FEDERAL STATUTES

There are three consumer protection statutes which basically define your civil rights as a consumer. The most popular is the Federal Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). The other two are the Fair Credit Billing Act (FCBA) as well as the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act (FDCPA). The utilization of the principles of all three of these acts is the ideal way to change your poor Credit Score into an attractive Personal Credit Report that will earn you many benefits over your lifetime.

THE FAIR CREDIT REPORTING ACT

The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) regulates how Credit Bureaus treat Consumers. In the early 1970’s, before this law, Creditors were free to do whatever they wanted, and often made their judgments about Consumers based on their race, religion or even color. The worst part was that many of these reports were confidential, so a Consumer would never know why they were charged a higher interest rate and couldn’t even defend themselves against such an injustice.

The FCRA ensures that consumers can acquire their Consumer Credit Reports at a reasonable price, regulates who can acquire a Consumer’s Credit Report and enforces a maximum time limit in which a certain item can be listed on a Credit Report. (Most items can only be listed for a maximum of 7 years, while a bankruptcy can be listed for 10 years.) Also worth noting, Credit Reports are not official government documents, and Credit Bureaus are not official government agencies. Lastly, Credit Bureaus are required to handle all Consumer Complaints in a timely manner, usually within 30 days. After their investigation, they must notify the customer of the new status of this item, whether it was confirmed, modified or deleted.

FAIR DEBT COLLECTION PRACTICES

The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) was enacted to protect ordinary people from Creditors and define the scope of what Creditors are allowed to do and threaten; in order to try and collect their debt. Without this law, debt collectors could come after you day and night, even pretending to be a Governmental Agency.
In short, the FDCPA provides standards for acceptable third­party collections behavior. For example, collection agencies can’t contact you after 9 P.M. or before 8 A.M. in the morning or they can’t harass you at your job. This act also specifies that debt collectors must always include several legal disclaimers in their dealings with debtors, such as “This correspondence is an attempt to collect a debt.” Also, if they don’t state their purpose right away when communicating with a debtor, whether that communication is written or verbal, then they are violating that Consumer’s Federal Civil Rights. They are not allowed to use violence, nor are the allowed to impersonate a Police Officer or any other type of deception. If you have a lawyer, collection agencies must communicate directly with them and not you. They must not violate your privacy and alert others in any way that they are trying to collect a debt from you. Lastly, consumers have the right to receive proof or validation of the debt that is trying to be collected.

THE FAIR CREDIT BILLING ACT

The Fair Credit Billing Act (FCBA) requires creditors to bill accurately and completely. The FTC summarizes the statute’s prohibitions as follows: “unauthorized charges; charges that list the wrong date or amount; charges for goods and services you didn’t accept or weren’t delivered as agreed; math errors; failure to post payments and other credits, such as returns; failure to send bills to your current address ­­ provided the creditor receives your change of address, in writing, at least 20 days before the billing period ends; and charges for which you ask for an explanation or written proof of purchase along with a claimed error or request for clarification.”

What’s also worth mentioning is that while original creditors aren’t bound by the FDCPA they are similarly bound by the FCBA. This holds original creditors responsible for the actions and record keeping of their third party collection companies.

HOW IT ALL TIES TOGETHER

Credit Umbrella’s system for you to repair your personal Credit Report is not just as simple as sending in a series of dispute letters regarding questionable items on your report. Our software employs a wide array of strategies, many of which don’t even involve the Credit Bureaus. In general FCRA disputes usually correlate with Credit Bureaus. Collection Agencies involve concepts from the FDCPA validations and FCRA disputes. And with regards to original Creditors, consider FCBA based interventions as well as FCRA disputes.

Your Credit Report and your Credit Score is important, and needs your attention today.

A collection agency is a business that pursues payments on debts owed by individuals. Most collection agencies operate as agents of creditors and collect debts for a fee or percentage of the total amount owed.

Collections are accounts that are seriously past due and/or have been transferred to a collection agency or creditor’s internal collection department. As debt is transferred between different agencies, there may be several records on the credit report for the same debt; however, only one record at a time should be marked as open on the credit report. Collection items use a unique format on the credit report.

ChexSystems is an eFunds check verification service and consumer credit reporting agency like Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. While most credit reporting agencies broker data about how a consumer handles credit relationships, ChexSystems provides data related to how a consumer has handled deposit accounts at banking institutions.

ChexSystems keeps information in their data bank for up to five (5) years unless you write a letter requesting that inaccurate item be removed from their files/data bank. Having inaccurate negative information in ChexSystems can prevent you from writing a check at some businesses or opening a checking account.

What is a Furnisher Dispute?

A furnisher dispute is when a consumer disputes an item directly with the furnisher of the data. A data furnisher can be a person, company, or organization that reports information to the credit bureaus. It might be a credit card company or a bank that services your mortgage, car loan, student loan, or other lending instrument.

A data furnisher can also be a collection agency or a court clerk that provides information on liens, judgments, and bankruptcies. Several laws allow consumers to dispute credit report items directly with the furnishers including the:

• Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA)

• Fair Credit Billing Act (FCBA), and

• for Debt Collectors, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA).

Furnisher disputes are proven to be highly effective.

When a furnisher adjusts a credit report listing in response to a dispute letter, they typically adjust it with all three (3) of the credit report agencies. This would save you from having to dispute the item with each credit bureau individually. A combination of furnisher disputes and credit bureau disputes is recommended.

FACTA’s “Early Warning” Notice

Under the statutes of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, creditors must notify you that they have recently placed negative information on your credit report. If they haven’t notified you, they are in violation of this legal statute and you can often use this as leverage to get them to remove the negative item from your credit report.

To help counter identity theft, FACTA now requires creditors to provide an “Early Warning Notice” which could alert you that something is wrong with your particular account. Even so, it’s always a good practice to monitor your own credit reports on a regular basis.

Negative Information Notification

Another concept worth mentioning in the FACTA regulations is the Negative Information Notification, (covered in Section 623(A)(7) and designed to help prevent identity theft. Any financial institution that extends credit and furnishes negative information about you to a credit bureau must notify you beforehand, and no later than 30 days.

Examples of negative information would be late, missed or partial payments as well as other defaults on an account.

• Q. Does the Negative Information Notification only apply to my bank?
  A. No. Under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, the reference to a “financial institution” includes banks, collection agencies and any merchants that extend credit.

• Q. If I have an account that is delinquent, how often will I receive a notice?
  A. You will only receive one (1) notice per each delinquent account. However, if your account continues to be delinquent, the financial institution can continue to report negative information, as long as they’ve notified you the first time within the legal limitations. This would be before they send their negative information or within 30 days after the first late payment has been reported.

• Q. Will the notice arrive as a “Registered Letter” or something similar?
  A. FACTA requires all financial institutions to provide you this notice along with “any notice of default, any billing statement, or any other materials provided to [you].” So, no, you probably won’t receive a “Registered Letter.” However, FACTA also states that the notice must be “clear and conspicuous,” and not hidden within the “Truth in Lending” notice that you received upon opening a new account.

• Q. What does the Negative Information Notification look like?
  A. Congress directed the Federal Reserve Board to write sample notifications that are short and to the point. Here is an example of a notification before negative information is reported.

  “We may report information about your account to credit bureaus. Late payments, missed payments, or other defaults on your account may be reflected in your credit report.”

  Here is an example of a notification after negative information has been reported.

  “We have told a credit bureau about a late payment, missed payment or other default on your account. This information may be reflected in your credit report.”

• Q. What if I never receive this notification?
  A. Per statutes in the FCRA, if the original creditor does not notify you of this negative information, you may request to have this information removed.

Introduction

Putting a fraud alert on you credit file is one of the first things you should do if you suspect someone is trying to open credit accounts in your name. It might be something you want to do even if you don’t think identity theft is an immediate threat.

What is a Fraud Alert?

A fraud alert is something that the major credit bureaus attach to your credit report. When you, or someone else, tries to open up a credit account by getting a new credit card, car loan, cell phone, etc., the lender should contact you by phone to verify that you really want to open a new account. If you aren’t reachable by phone, the credit account shouldn’t be opened.

How Fraud Alerts Works

When a business sees the alert on your credit report, it must verify your identity before issuing you credit. As part of this verification process, the business may try to contact you directly. This may cause some delays if you’re trying to obtain credit. To compensate for possible delays, you may wish to include in your alert a cell phone number where you can be reached easily. Remember to keep current all contact information in your alert.

The fraud alert will remain in place for only 90 days. When the time runs out, you’ll need to reactivate the alert. You can also apply for a 7-year victim statement that will keep the alert in place for, you guessed it – seven (7) years. For this, you will have to provide proof that you’ve been a victim of fraud.

You should follow up to the previously verified letters. Therefore, you shouldn’t dispute the same information while you are following up and requesting reinvestigation on the same information. This is because, the new information that I found out indicated that the problem is with the account. In all cases, you should make sure that the letter is not a “not mine” type of a letter since they are useless and that is an outdated method. The methods that you can use are by indicating that the account number was incorrect, the account balance was incorrect or the date of the last activity in the account was incorrect.

This will be a great way for new companies to begin where as they learn on new topics they will be able to focus on what they do best. I always work on the principle of doing my best and delegating the rest. This will enable professionals to do all the back end work and handle disputes while you do the front end work for selling until you resolve to upgrade entirely.

Most of these services have a $1 trial with instant access to reports and scores from all 3 bureaus.

• PrivacyGuard.com
• CreditCheckTotal.com
• enhanced.wellsfargoprotection.com
• IdentitySecure.com
• FreeScore.com
• FreeScore360.com
• Scoresense.com

When you are doing marketing, it is a priority to keep things fresh and to customize your business. In the credit repair business, there are a variety of various marketing pieces and clever materials that you can leave with your referral partners as you are developing relationships. There are also different presentations that can be done to groups. There are many marketing materials in your software’s Forms And Marketing which can help you help you.

YES, it is recommended that you test whether by mailing new disputes you will get better responses.

From your case scenario, it looks like the old judgement paid off. The way you have stated your question is not clear as to whether you are looking for a score increase or whether you are just looking for notation that the judgement paid off. If you are looking for a score increase, this may not happen in your case. This is because if there was a collection, the score would most likely decrease. Hopefully, I guess you are not waiting for a score increase. If you were looking to have your balance showing zero so that you can get a loan approved, all you need to do is contact the tri-merge company that works with the mortgage lender. This is the tip everybody should use to make big money. This will enable you to provide rapid re-scoring services through the vendor used by the mortgage lender. This is the talk we are getting into where no tri-merge provider will do business for Credit Repair Company. As part of your mandate, when you talk to the mortgage lender, you should provide a rapid re-score systems directly with the companies that already used to provide their tri-merge. The ultimate aim of this is to find out the identity of the tri-merge company, whether the company is First American Credit Co, whether it is Network Credit or whether it is one the big tri-merge companies out there. When you are doing business with a specific broker, you will be able to find out each one of the companies. After finding out the companies, you should search on their websites for the rapid re-score order forms and their rapid re-score information. A rapid re-score involves submitting documentation to a mortgage company to correct an error on the report or to update information on the report. The tri-merge has a special agreement with the bureaus such that when information is submitted, it is updated with the bureau within 48-72 hours. After it is updated, the new score is created based on the new data where a poll is carried out. However, there still needs for hard documentation to be put in place so that you can get any type of change or update. The tri-merge provider has a form that must be filled out and in

The ultimate aim of this is to find out the identity of the tri-merge company, whether the company is First American Credit Co, whether it is Network Credit or whether it is one the big tri-merge companies out there. When you are doing business with a specific broker, you will be able to find out each one of the companies. After finding out the companies, you should search on their websites for the rapid re-score order forms and their rapid re-score information. A rapid re-score involves submitting documentation to a mortgage company to correct an error on the report or to update information on the report. The tri-merge has a special agreement with the bureaus such that when information is submitted, it is updated with the bureau within 48-72 hours. After it is updated, the new score is created based on the new data where a poll is carried out. However, there still needs for hard documentation to be put in place so that you can get any type of change or update. The tri-merge provider has a form that must be filled out and in accompaniment with that form there is also needs to be hard documentation whether it is a “pay-off statement”, whether it a request for letter deletion or whether it is a universal data form which am sure most of you have not seen it. For those who have not seen it, the form is either in ACD or UDF form. I will be sending the form at the end of the call and I will show you how to get it for free. Michael will remind me to send the form. The form is sent when there is any type of correction or anything else from a collection agency. Regardless of the situation, the tri-merge company always does quickly in a rapid re-score. There are many people who think they can’t get in that situation, but since your business is a service business, you are there to service clients and to service lenders, providing an extra service gives you a competitive advantage over your adversaries. The extra service is that you are filling out forms for the broker and faxing the forms for the broker. This makes the customer understand the rapid re-score process and the broker understands who get billed and why they get billed for a service. Since you cannot pay for it, the broker typically pays for it directly from the tri-merge company. What you are actually providing is the ability to get the form that brokers need so that they can do the rapid re-score. You should fill out the rapid re-score form and submit it to the tri-merge company. That is the extra valuable service that you will be providing because many brokers do not have the idea how to do the rapid re-score. For successful rapid re-score, all it takes is filling out some forms and getting the documentation to prove that the rapid re-score can take place. In our scenario, when the mortgage lender wishes to see the old judgement paid off, you can actually do a rapid re-score if you need the score to change and supplement it to the credit report. After doing that, many government lenders will accept it. That is how you make money where you can add that to the list of services that you provide as long as you implement it in the right context. This will enable you to provide rapid re-score assistance to many people. After assisting them in getting the job done, the mortgage lender will not have to do it.

The ultimate aim of this is to find out the identity of the tri-merge company, whether the company is First American Credit Co, whether it is Network Credit or whether it is one the big tri-merge companies out there. When you are doing business with a specific broker, you will be able to find out each one of the companies. After finding out the companies, you should search on their websites for the rapid re-score order forms and their rapid re-score information. A rapid re-score involves submitting documentation to a mortgage company to correct an error on the report or to update information on the report. The tri-merge has a special agreement with the bureaus such that when information is submitted, it is updated with the bureau within 48-72 hours. After it is updated, the new score is created based on the new data where a poll is carried out. However, there still needs for hard documentation to be put in place so that you can get any type of change or update. The tri-merge provider has a form that must be filled out and in accompaniment with that form there is also needs to be hard documentation whether it is a “pay-off statement”, whether it a request for letter deletion or whether it is a universal data form which am sure most of you have not seen it. For those who have not seen it, the form is either in ACD or UDF form. I will be sending the form at the end of the call and I will show you how to get it for free. Michael will remind me to send the form. The form is sent when there is any type of correction or anything else from a collection agency. Regardless of the situation, the tri-merge company always does quickly in a rapid re-score. There are many people who think they can’t get in that situation, but since your business is a service business, you are there to service clients and to service lenders, providing an extra service gives you a competitive advantage over your adversaries. The extra service is that you are filling out forms for the broker and faxing the forms for the broker. This makes the customer understand the rapid re-score process and the broker understands who get billed and why they get billed for a service. Since you cannot pay for it, the broker typically pays for it directly from the tri-merge company. What you are actually providing is the ability to get the form that brokers need so that they can do the rapid re-score. You should fill out the rapid re-score form and submit it to the tri-merge company. That is the extra valuable service that you will be providing because many brokers do not have the idea how to do the rapid re-score. For successful rapid re-score, all it takes is filling out some forms and getting the documentation to prove that the rapid re-score can take place. In our scenario, when the mortgage lender wishes to see the old judgement paid off, you can actually do a rapid re-score if you need the score to change and supplement it to the credit report. After doing that, many government lenders will accept it. That is how you make money where you can add that to the list of services that you provide as long as you implement it in the right context. This will enable you to provide rapid re-score assistance to many people. After assisting them in getting the job done, the mortgage lender will not have to do it.

“Paid in full” does not guarantee that the judgement has to be removed. After sending your letter to the credit bureaus, all they will be required to do is to update the letter so that it shows it’s “paid in full”. The letter that you have sent acts as memo showing that a judgement was made. The judgement is not guaranteed to come up after the credit report for another seven years. It is sad to say, but once they have the memo, they will keep it on. At this point, if the lender still want the judgement removed, it is almost impossible because the credit bureau has the information to indicate that it is valid. My suggestions for the future are that after it is “paid in full” you can dispute any information in the report that was incorrect. This is because they will have information that is incorrect in the report such as incorrect balance, yet the balance was “paid in full”. The bureau only deletes the incorrect information since it is inaccurate. After that, you should request them whether the item is verifiable, if it is not verifiable, they would be breaking the law by failing to verify it yet they continue to report it. It will be tough since they actually proved that it is valid. In the future, I should reconsider sending the letters to credit bureaus since it will backslash.

There are various ways to get affiliates, but getting out to people and doing presentations is what I always recommend as the best practice. It is always great when you empower people with knowledge, it is easier for people to learn to know, people will like you and learn how to trust you, and they will be interested in doing business with you. All you should do is acquire courses from various professions whether legal, tax, financial, accounting and then present these educational courses to people through various methods such as seminars, seminars or any other method that foster and creates better relationships. This is the best method to approach people and get feedback for improvements and collaboration. Instead of trying one on one meeting, one on twenty meetings, your odds are much better of getting your return on investment by using the other methods discussed above. It is simple to look back on previous seminars where you can see that we have done total explanation on setting up. I think the best way of reaching people is where you target community groups, BNI, rotary clubs and networking places. Through implementation of such methods, we will always reach out more people and get more affiliates.

A squeeze page is a single web page with the sole purpose of capturing information for follow-up marketing; that means NO exit hyperlinks. Quality squeeze pages use success stories that the prospect would relate to when making a buying decision. They also use things like color psychology, catchy sales copy and keyword rich text placed with SEO (search engine optimization) in mind. Some advanced marketers even use audio and video on their squeeze page.

Internet marketers borrow copywriting techniques from offline direct response marketing. This includes the use of a headline, bullets, teaser copy, deadlines, testimonials, scarcity, and the like. Aggressive marketers will present visitors with multiple incentives in exchange for their contact information.

For rapid re-score, the tri-merge company mostly charges 30 dollars per line per bureau. For instance, if you are doing one item for rapid re-score, it would cost you 90 dollars which is paid to the mortgage company which does the rapid re-score. The charge on the actual service depends on what you did in order to get the documentation for allowing rapid re-score. It is a simple transaction if you were telling customers to pay off their credit cards and providing them with a form showing their updated balance. However, if you were negotiating payments with a collection agency for deletion, and you had payments for deletion letter, this would command a much higher fee. It all depends on the situation, the set-up of your business base model and how much work is done. If you set up your business such that you charge 29 dollars a month, it will be difficult for you to justify your charges of 500 dollars on one occurrence. If you have set up the business as a concierge-white-club-treatment-type of facility, and you tell the clients “we charge 1000 dollars for our services, we prepare the documentation for the mortgage lender and work together to submit for a rapid re-score. After the submission, we ensure that within three days, the score is rescored. We cannot guarantee you the value of the new score, but you will know exactly what it is in three days. You don’t have to wait anymore, is that worth 1000 dollars for you?” For most people who will think that your business must be set up to that fashion, you can justify the price by offering great services. Dan Kennedy, who is one of the best marketers in the world, argues in one of his seminars and presentations that he charges an average of 50000 dollars to write a sales letter. The payment includes writing the sales letter for the product, loyalties and a percentage of the profits earned from the sales letter. Dan Kennedy is trying to teach people how to how to write and copy write. This is one of the most difficult jobs to do which needs a lot of practice and maintaining a “straight face”. If you ask him what he means by keeping a “straight face”, he says that “I have to look at them and tell them that I will charge them 50000 dollars and I don’t laugh knowing how easy it is for me to write the letter” .The reality is that it is not easy for people to do it, someone may have the skills, someone may have the knowledge and someone may be a specialist in what they do, but the other person does not have them. It may be easy to you, but it is life changing for some people and it adds enormous value to them. As Dan Kennedy states, you must look at a person keeping a “straight face”, so that it is value for value without covering up something. If you are going to save thousands of dollars by doing what you are doing, you can charge a thousand dollars as long as you are compliant and the clients knows what they are getting into ahead of time. This is by clearly disclosing everything. Unless you keep a “straight face”, you will have problems when charging clients a lot of money even if you deliver abundant amount of work.

You don’t have to wait anymore, is that worth 1000 dollars for you?” For most people who will think that your business must be set up to that fashion, you can justify the price by offering great services. Dan Kennedy, who is one of the best marketers in the world, argues in one of his seminars and presentations that he charges an average of 50000 dollars to write a sales letter. The payment includes writing the sales letter for the product, loyalties and a percentage of the profits earned from the sales letter. Dan Kennedy is trying to teach people how to how to write and copy write. This is one of the most difficult jobs to do which needs a lot of practice and maintaining a “straight face”. If you ask him what he means by keeping a “straight face”, he says that “I have to look at them and tell them that I will charge them 50000 dollars and I don’t laugh knowing how easy it is for me to write the letter” .The reality is that it is not easy for people to do it, someone may have the skills, someone may have the knowledge and someone may be a specialist in what they do, but the other person does not have them. It may be easy to you, but it is life changing for some people and it adds enormous value to them. As Dan Kennedy states, you must look at a person keeping a “straight face”, so that it is value for value without covering up something. If you are going to save thousands of dollars by doing what you are doing, you can charge a thousand dollars as long as you are compliant and the clients knows what they are getting into ahead of time. This is by clearly disclosing everything. Unless you keep a “straight face”, you will have problems when charging clients a lot of money even if you deliver abundant amount of work.

A TV advertisement is a great way to make the phone ring. Every time you do a TV ad, you must be prepared when the phones rings through. This is because you never know exactly what time your spots are going to go on. It is recommended that you should have a call center or someone who is prepared with the scripts and ready to do it. In a TV spot, you should also nurture the client. The best practice is finding a way to generate interest and once you have the interest you can nurture that person into a client. You can nurture a person into a client through some sort of auto-respond process or through some website process. This is where you get them on TV and go to some websites to get some free information. You also need to do the right set up by automating the whole process as much as you can so as to ensure that you can convert that lead from a suspect into a prospect and finally into a client. To practice radio and doing television has proved to be an extremely effective mechanism. Pay per click online is equally an effective mechanism, but you will be competing with a lot of people for a highly popular search item and it could be costly if your sales process is not set up in the right way. Whenever you are taking them directly from a brochure website, you can be guaranteed that you will never be able to maximize those leads. However, if you have an ethical bribe or a unique value proposition you can take them on your list by giving them something. Once you have them on your list, you can mature than lead into a customer and finally into a raving fan and an ongoing loyal referral partner. There is no defined remedy to have the best responses since there are varieties of different mechanisms for making people raise their hands. You must have a good sales process in place to ensure that you transform people from suspect to prospect, to client and finally a raving fan.

In most cases, when you file a dispute with the credit bureaus, they just sit down and check their “in-house” records. When you dispute online, the credit bureau usually strips the customer’ rights and that is the reason why we don’t recommend someone to dispute online. You should always tell your clients to NEVER DISPUTE ONLINE!!! This will ensure that they don’t give a justification, they don’t give to give you a method of verification, they don’t have to give you written responses and there are a lot of stuffs that they don’t have to do. On a standard dispute, what usually happens is that they get it in and request information electronically using eOscar. The data furnisher usually gets a list every day that comes from the eOscar. Most of you who attended the sessions at the Seminar will remember that we discussed the inside scheme of eOscar showing the step by step process of what goes on in the back room of the data furnisher. Actually most of you who are on the line and obviously those of you, who have taken this advantage, will see some amazing stuff inside eOscar. It will only cost you 1.99 today and four more payments of 1.99 for you to get an ID theft which will give you the right to publish a book. When you are publishing the book, you will see eOscar. Actually they go through eOscar and then the data furnisher responds. One of the things that you will realize when you are at the Seminar is how the big guns made a system that can really destroy consumers. EOscar came up with a new mechanism called “Batch interface”, which allows them to automatically verify hundreds of accounts simultaneously. The actually don’t go from one account to another sequentially. I personally think going account by account at a time is a violation in itself. We hope that as a group we will be able to come together and work out a political action to get such things outlawed. A big XYZ big bang can go and verify a hundred of accounts simultaneously without opening them one by one. Actually, it is a travesty and it goes back to the original creditor unless you practice an online dispute.

I would launch the dispute with the tri-merge company. Since it is possible to dispute with tri-merge companies, I would launch a dispute and request for an update. This is because there is a mortgage broker working for the tri-merge company. When launching the dispute, you should clearly highlight to the tri-merge company, your initial dispute and the reply from. After this process, you should send a letter to the Transunion stating “I am being denied grounded on the information that you stated that it was not reporting”. Therefore, you must rectify this immediately with this company by sending that follow up.

We are not aware of any advantage whether logistical advantage, legal advantage or any other advantage of using the word financial. What I am sure is that the word “Financial” is used in marketing the company. The word also gives the company a more professional appeal.

Good question. We would probably say “YES” as my initial answer. This is because, if you considered a credit repair company in the state you are working and you physically have an office location and clients in that state, my beginning answers would be “YES”. However, I would not hesitate to have someone with additional information to show me otherwise.

SEO basically stands for “search engine optimization”. It is a way to optimize your website so u can rank your website higher..n by optimizing it..meaning by keywords, the relevancy of your site, and the unique content within it.because that’s what Google looks for..those three things. Search Engine Optimization is simply the process of increasing the visibility of a web page. All search engine traffic starts with a keyword. We pick a keyword to target and rank for it in order to get the traffic generated by that query. The act of getting a page on our site to the top of the SERPs (search engine results pages) is essentially SEO. When you are on the search engine and you search “credit repair companies” or you type “credit repair” the website that is optimized for that term is higher in the ranking. Do you appear unexpectedly? Ok? That explains what search engine optimization does.

This is one the most debated topics where you will find different people who have had success in one way or another. I personally believe if you are the consumer and you popped up in your report for the first time and you found 18 errors, you wouldn’t say “hey, i will make 18 different letters”. In this case, you will put it all in one letter as long as you have a real reason. In the letter, just don’t put “not mine, not mine” which is a common gang, but as I have said earlier “not mine” will not work. It is not an effective mechanism to do it and you’re following through using it will kill consumers in the long run. As long as you are carrying out real disputes, you should set them up properly. There is no problem in putting them all in one letter as long as you have legitimate reasons for all the items. Sometimes it may require a little more work but you must do it in the right way. Some people may disagree with what I have just said which is perfectly ok. I wouldn’t say this in front of my staff, so, my staff, just close your ears. My way is not the only way for everyone else outside, but in my office, my way is the only way. Sometimes it has worked and sometimes it has failed. This implies that whatever we recommend to you is based on experience and we won’t bring anything to you unless it has been tested and proved it can work.

To stay up late nights or to go on chats is not a good marketing strategy. In our case, we engage in a lot of SEO, we write articles and blogs that once they are published, they bring links into the website. We engage in social media marketing, we engage in seminar on SEO, and we can do more if we have an audience who are interested. In your comments, if you request for a seminar on SEO, we will happily do it. In the past, we were requested to carry out a seminar on “as a non-lawyer, the things that can help in training lawyers, what are the things that can aid them in making more money”.

In most cases, a conveyor system is used when letters comes into the bureaus. The system scans the envelope and also scans the letter. Envelopes printed by a computer are categorized as A-pile and B-pile. A-pile mail refers to the pile that you read immediately, while B-pile mail refers to the junk mail which proceeds directly into the trash. A-pile mail is regarded as consumer authentic where it is responded with care, in a timely manner and the response has to be correct. B-pile mail refers to the mail that comes from credit repair companies where they get away with generic responses and the letter is treated in a trivial manner. Hand-written envelopes bring an extra personal touch and are categorized in the A-pile. The handwritten mailings are personal, effective and improve your direct mail return on investment. The hand-written envelope increases the chance of a customer opening and reading the message. After optical character recognition, the manual review process can reveal if the letters were computer generated where if the envelope is hand-written, it will be more successful.

Yes, trying to explain FCRA to a customer is misrepresenting as a lawyer. For instance, you don’t get into detail fact and detailed section of the law. Also, you don’t explain there are different consumer protections laws that a customer can try and utilize to leverage for deletion. The law also states that the credit bureaus have a responsibility to maintain compliance of the law and if they don’t comply with the law, their items get deleted. The rule is fairly simple. In your advertisement, you could use that piece that I cut out earlier to show that the credit repair is legal. In my case, I would use FCRA to show that the credit repair organization is legal. The reason I will use CROA is because they will come out and say that they read it. For those who doubt it, you can make part of your pitch and say “hey, whatever I do, everyone can do it on their own” This will show that you are complying since you have disclosed to them properly and they can read it on paper. There will be no surprises and they can say “hey, he said that we can do it on our own”. If they can read the book, then they can do it. Just like it is not prohibited by the law to do your own root canal, the question is; do you want to do it on your own? Are you the expert? You can do most things on your own, but are you the best at it? As an expert I would propose that you don’t charge in advance as opposed to credit repair companies that charge in advance. You should bring out the good and the bad, so that when they read such stuff you will be able to convert them instantly. This can be part of your auto-respond system where you can say words like “this part of CROA or that part of CROA”. By doing that, you will definitely add to your advertisement.

Well, I think you should elaborate more on what you mean by mailing all at once. Do you mean sending letters to many clients at once? It is always recommended that the clients who had the last touch on them should send the letter themselves. Clients often delay and blame you for their slowness, so if you are handling a client, you should strive and get everything done to completion. If you resolve on the first option, you should set customer expectations and tell them “hey, I will play my role and send you this letter, you must do this and this, on a particular date, and that is the only way possible to do this, other than that you will be fired from the program”. Anyway, you cannot send away a customer unless you want to get rid of them. When dealing with letters coming out simultaneously, I would not drop many letters in the mail from the same location; I would send it to various sites according to geographical locations. This would make the letters have different post stamp on them. Nevertheless, if the envelopes are handwritten and have a verifiable style, no one will examine the stamp.

From my interpretation, when they replied stating that the documents are not available, that implies that they cannot verify them. If they cannot verify the document, they must delete them from their system. The old principle of if they don’t fit you must quit is applied where if they cannot prove it, they must delete it. It is not funny, but the truth is if they cannot do the verification of the documents, then they are out. When the bureau is distributing the verification documents, they don’t have to provide verification documents to you, but they provide you with a mechanism in which the documents can be verified. The bureau actually tells you the step by step process of how they verified the documents. The bureau does not give you the documents and when they say they can verify them, the documents have to be removed. There is no law that stipulates that the bureau has to give you the physical documents. Getting into argument with the bureau every now and then is based on how you carried out a reasonable investigation and the method you used for verification. The big question is based on your method of verification; was it a reasonable method based on the information that was given to you? It really gets awkward back and forth from there.

The dispute codes are there to highlight what is happening in the bureaus. It demonstrates how they can understand the letter you have written and translates it into a dispute code. If you have an actual disputed problem, a situation or a reason that you cannot fit into those codes, you know they will be having problems and wondering what to do next. For that reason, you need to look into those codes, study and comprehend what the bureau can or cannot do, and how they will transfer that. That is the reason codes are available for us. This is not a wizard trick, I am just giving you the information where you have to educate yourself and use it to your advantage. It is always nice when you realize and identify what the other side is doing. Anytime you are in a match, whether in business or academic, it is always great to know what your adversaries are doing. All the opponents have to look at the credit bureaus for information. You have to comprehend everything that is going on during the entire process. That is the main reason why we have dispute codes.

This is the famous suspicion request letter we have been talking about. In case of anyone who has not viewed it, I will show it on the screens so that you can read it. Actually, it states that “this is misleading and deceitful use of your information; we sense that it was not sent by you, and we think you hired a credit repair company”. The aim is to get a swollen packet that provides a way to experiment and come out and state “hey, we think you are using a credit repair company, we will try and bully you since most of the people who get this notice don’t respond properly so we will continue to do it thus we will continue to break the law”. What is the correct response to this? When people send suspicious response letter, they want you to automatically send a response, so that you send them additional information about your dispute. After they have received additional information about your dispute, you should just give them additional 15 days; this means that they no longer have 30 days but 45 days. They are working in the system, but they are working at a much bigger scale and they are winning a whole lot of it. You need to wait for 35 days from the date they should have received the letter and you attack them by saying “NO, I sent you verifiable information with my name and address and the information in the letter was not a frivolous dispute, therefore, I will give you five days to permanently delete this information or I will sue you. In this letter, I have attached a FTC fraud complaint and a letter to the Attorney General”. This means that I will be sending this letters if you don’t act quickly. If you send such a letter, you will get much faster responses. This is one of the ways to deal with it, another way is giving them an extra 15 days and sending them a letter stating “hey, No, this was not a frivolous request and I will not extend the time that you allowed since you have ample time remaining”. You can call them out since I have not seen any case in court that actually kept them to thirty days or 45 days. You can always count on the law that gives them 45 days if you sent them additional information. It can be argued whether it is relevant or not, but the judges would usually sway on the other side.

Actually, what matters is whether you mailed it back. When you are reporting to Equifax, you should mail to Equifax. From my understanding, I don’t know of any law that stipulates that you mail the disputes elsewhere. From my experience, I have never had a problem when mailing back. If you are reporting, you should send the mail to who you are reporting. Recently inside disputes, we made availability of people actually picking the addresses where you can put in all the addresses that you want without the limit of one address per bureau. We have added an amazing functionality where you can put many addresses per bureau and you can choose the addresses based on letter. I just wanted to let you know so that you can actually do it if you want.

We are trying to do our best and maintain that professionalism. This comes from collaboration from everyone helping each other. In order for me to promote everyone helping each other, I have to be doing it not just talking about it. I am hoping you will get other people involved and you will teach them to have the same mind-set of helping the consumer’s more because that what we want. If consumers are in trouble, we have to help them get out of the problem and educate them so that they don’t get into trouble again. I have heard a lot of people in this industry saying, “Hey, you know what; the greatest part of this industry is that you don’t have to get customers, they just come back to you. After customer’s screw up their credit for two years, they come back to you”. I wouldn’t want to have that customer back unless there was a major life occurrence that happened. In this business, you don’t want re-occurrences since it is not like “buy here, pay here” principle. The aim of the business is to change people’s lives. For those who treat this business as a money collection place, you have nothing to do here since you are wasting your time and other people’s time. Before you start this business, you need to give it enough care and consideration to avoid doing something wrong. In business there are different customers, some might come back and some of them might be perpetual customers with procrastinating bad credit. Regardless of that, you have to do your best so that customers don’t get into trouble. That is what we call professionalism where you owe the customer a lot, not because they are buying your products or services, but because they are giving you their precious time. That means that customers trust me and they like me. I also want you to develop the same relationship with your customers and referral partners.

The answer to your question, “can you charge somebody $3K or $6K to remove a foreclosure?” is YES. There is no law that would prohibit you from charging the fee, but you have to be cautious where law comes into play. You must justify what you are doing with that $3k or $6k and you must state when you collect it. If you are planning on collecting upfront payment, that will not work as the law prohibits that in CROA. From my experience, I have practiced “concierge level treatment” where we would charge between $3k and $6k when the customer expected miracles. That fee was very high, but we never collected it until the work had been completed. For most of the clients, it was 1, 2 or 3-item cases, but if it was more than 3, the fee would really go up. Most of these cases were occurrences with major problems and these people were ready to take another step. Because of that practice, I was considered amongst a lot of people in this country as a “goal-to guy” where attorneys around the country would send me those clients and I would work directly with those attorneys. For those who have had a background on mortgage, imagine a pre-qual from a sub-prime lender where you would send a sub-prime account executive the credit report 1003 and they would send you back a pre-qual, saying, “This is what we can do, here is our rate, here are the terms, here is what we need”. The attorney would actually send the credit report to me or to one of the people I have trained in my office saying “ok, we need this fixed, here is the problem” and in most cases there was no contact with the customer. After reviewing the problem, we would send them back a pre-qual stating the amount of cash we expect and when we expect to complete the task. The amount was always between $3k and $5k and sometimes we gave no time frame for completion of the task. We did not get in touch with the client, but we were 95% in touch with the attorney. The attorney would pay us immediately after completion of the task. Basically, the problem of charging $3K or $6K per unit arises when you collect them as upfront payment. That is a violation of CROA. If you are collecting the payment for having the item deleted, you’re ultimately acting as a credit repair organization. Therefore, you still fall under the CROA. If you are working as an attorney to find specific errors that were done, and throughout these errors you plan to litigate this, then that’s a different story. In that case, you might not be considered under CROA. If you are a non-attorney, you can’t help them go to court since you will be practicing law without license which is considered as Unlicensed Practice of Law (UPL). In every state, there is an unlicensed law practicing rules that are governed by the states BAR association. You should not try to call credit repair something that it is not just to get that $3K or $6K. There are people that will pay you that fee if you have the relevant expertise. The UPL problem comes in if you start helping the clients go to court. If you are helping clients go to court, I would consider consulting with the House Counsel and contact a State Attorney General to ask for their opinion letter which would greatly help you work comfortably. If you have a specialty and you can help people where others can’t, getting huge fees is justified, since you are paid what you are worth. It is always good to do things without getting paid. In my case I have done many things that were pro bono. Even though you may offer services for free, that should not change your worth. In conclusion, you should always ask high fees for your expertise services and also do pro bono things as well.

This is a good question from one the highly debated topics. There are two types of law; the state law and the federal law. The federal law is the CROA while state law is your state’s credit repair organization act. I have spoken to a lot of attorneys (such as Dominic from the National Association of Credit Service Organizations) on this, and the best analogy is drinking age. This has not been taken to any court I am aware of. If you have representatives on the ground in other states where they are physically on the ground working in those states, then that is where the business is taking place. If you are always on telephone or internet, then the business is taking place where your home office is. You should consult with the your corporate counsel to get their opinion, but so far everything we have researched has led to this conclusion based on the state where the business closes. The contract is signed where the sale is actually happening. If you are having a face-to-face sale in another state you should get licensed in those states where you have representatives. I think this was a good question and although it had come up in the past, I am glad we have had a chance to talk about it again

Under the FCRA law, the credit reporting agency and the bureaus are supposed to provide you with sufficient information for you to recuperate to the original creditor. If the credit reporting agency and the bureau does not provide enough information, they are breaking the law. If they fail to provide the information, I would write a follow up letter to the bureau explaining my case. After writing the follow up letter, I would wait to see whether they would provide the correct information or they will give identical information again. I would consider launching either an FTC fraud complaint or a General Attorney complaint, if they provided identical information again. The complaint would state that the information is unverifiable by failing to contact the person who provided it.

Actually, most of the analyses out there are very generic. On the other hand, TurboDispute’s import credit report feature will read and spot all negative information and inquiries. from there you can decide what you and your client would like to dispute.

I want to elaborate about this, there is a new law; the New FACT regulation 3.12, which has not been enacted, but the law will outlaw the “pay for delete”. There are other measures in the law that is beneficial to credit repair companies, but “pay for delete” is one of the bad measures. At the moment, I don’t think that the law has been passed, but I will bring more information about it. In the near future, “pay for delete” may be gone. I do not think halls/lobbies utilized as collection agencies will allow that to happen, since they make a lot of money on “pay for delete”. The other question was on ‘what you do later to that if you settle for less than the balance’. This may be just a validation test where it may be ongoing disputes and it could threaten to sue them after selling them. Who wishes to go to a lawsuit after you have sold the accounts? Nobody, since the collection agency does not gain anything by the lawsuit. If they are still reporting on outdated, inaccurate and unverifiable information, then you should sue them. You should inform them that you have a plan to sue them.

Yes, you can ask for a validation letter from the original creditors. The original creditors must report accurate information even after the sale of the account. You can always enforce a Credit Billing Act dispute grounded on inquiries or requests, not on billing dispute. The billing disputes occur when you are billing for 60 days but for an inquiry into the account information and there is no definite period on that. This creates a tactic which you can always use to utilize and understand Fair Credit Billing Act. You can ask for the account information, the history of accounts and statements, as long as you are not disputing the actual charge since you have a chance to dispute it in 60 days.

The best way to solve this issue is by going to the accounting section to get a statement from the accounting clerk. The best way is to have it in writing so that you can send it to the creditors stating “hey, how did you claim to have verified because the accounting clerk has said that they do not verify and they are not a subscriber”. They have stated that they do not verify anything with credit bureaus, so how could you have possibly verified the information? I think you have made an error when you were carrying out your investigations. At the moment, I will give you a chance to delete the record since it contains outdated, inaccurate and unverifiable information.

Yes, there is a tactic we call DV Tri-factor contained in the Tactical guide. I am willing to give you much of the information, but I can’t give everything. The DV Tri-factor is a tactic that you can use where it is timed correctly using the differences between times and dates so that it traps the creditor in breaking the law. All you have to do is to set-up the timing properly and for those who are members of the Biz-Box community, it will take you a step by step guidance on the “double-shot-gun-barrel” approach. If you want a guide to “double-shot-gun-barrel” approach, contact supportdisputes.com or email them. One of their representatives will guide you in the tour of the sneak peak at “double-shot-gun-barrel” approach. The tour will also highlight over thirty or forty tactics that we never get time to discuss on seminars.

Yes, i would suggest that the creditor should be contacted to delete the statement. I have not heard it being problematic on the FHA side. Although it might be a problem, I have not heard of it, so the best way to solve it is to contact the creditor for removal.

Please request them for specificity on the document. After that, ask them to carry out a proper investigation on whether they have the documentation, if the creditor did not provide the documentation or the data furnisher did not provide the documentation to support a reasonable investigation. If they cannot verify then they must remove it. The principle of ‘if they can’t prove it, they must remove it’ is applied.

What do you mean by representative company? The answer is YES if you are trying to act as an attorney, and the answer is NO, if you are working on behalf of the customer and you are sending the power of attorney from the customer. Even if you have authorization from the customer, you cannot call up and pretend to be the customer. Although that might work, it is not the right way to do things. You can always talk to them as long as they are aware of your identity, your company, your relationship with the customer, and if you have set up to enable proper authorization. In most cases, if collection agencies think you will pay the debt, they often just talk to you without any information. That is a violation of the law. However, depending on your state law, you might be allowed to record the conversation. If you record the conversation, that is a good tactic which is an easy violation through back at them.

According to law, the credit bureaus cannot re-insert negative information, unless they send you a notification five days before the re-insertion. The 5 days period is to give you ample time to control the situation. If you find that they re-inserted the information without notifying you, you should send them a letter saying, “”hey, you did not send the re-insertion letter to me. You need to do re-investigation because the information is inaccurate, out-dated and unverifiable”.

Yes, post-bankruptcy is probably one of the easiest things to do by establishing new accounts immediately. Before or after they get the discharge, they immediately get one of the accounts that we do on the trade-line. Actually, you can go to the local bank and deposit 1000 dollars. After you have deposited, you can borrow against the 1000 dollars and make payments, so that you have a low balance in the account. You should not overspend, since everything in their budget is what you are trying to tell customers to do, so that you get all the erroneous off from the bankruptcy. First of all, you should understand that information that that has been reported cannot be used legally. This is because in a bankruptcy account you are looking at the account name and account number. This is where you cannot report any information about the account being late, the account can’t report balances, the account cannot report high credit and the account cannot report payments. Once all that is cleaned up, the report just shows the all the accounts that are bankruptcy and a lot of them collapse because they can’t prove the information. Many creditors are scared of bankruptcy because of the heavy fines that are imposed. The key to avoid bankruptcy is establishing a new credit right away and keeping that credit perfect.

At this point, you have to go back to the credit reporting agencies and explain to them that you contacted the provider and they have said that they are not a subscriber. Actually the actual creditor has stated that the information you are providing is inaccurate. The amount you are reporting is inaccurate and according to FCRA, you have violated the law.

In such a scenario, you should contact the creditor and explain to them that they are violating the FCRA by not reporting the account accurately. When you asked the credit bureaus to do an investigation, they did the investigation and responded back to you saying that Capital One did an investigation. The creditor has violated the law several times by not reporting the accurately since they did not do an investigation. You should also send the report to the credit bureaus indicating that they are in violation of the law for not conducting a reasonable investigation. You should also send to them the proof along with the report showing all the violations. You should also launch an FTC complaint and an Attorney General Complaint.

NO, what matters is the collection agency. For the amount of cash, you should be concerned on the type of aggressive tactic you can use. There are many tactics that you can use on a 500-dollar account because the filling fee for the company to file in court is probably near that amount. The odds are for them suing the law on a 5000-dollar account. If you are within the statute limitations, they may as well sue the client which would land you in ‘hot water’. The actual numeric makes no difference, but what matters is the inaccurate amount in the report. This is because many of the accounts reported by collection agencies are unverifiable. The accounts have no hard data to prove they are actually in the account and to prove the value of the original debt. The collection agencies don’t have contracts thus they buy spread sheets not contracts.

For sure, there are no credit police to enforce the removal of unverified items. Since there are no credit police to enforce, you need an attorney. The attorney can take a small law case and have immediate fines and penalties applied to the creditor. A demand letter from an attorney can ultimately make a lot of things happen a lot faster than potential credit police. You should also write complaint letters to FTC and BBB. The attorney general will have a major impact since FTC does not like collection agencies and credit repair companies. This is something you should consider. One of the reasons why you should have an attorney is when creditors violate the law, you can have someone to work with and align with to be able to take that next step.

Chase, Bank of america and city bank. Wells fargo is very strict and even checks credit to open regular personal checking account. Other banks are more linnet and easier to get a secure credit card. After getting a secure credit card and you can also try to add an authorized user on the credit profile to boost the credit score. You can use this service to do it http://www.boostmyscore.net/decide

From our research and information shared from other users the best place is http://www.boostmyscore.net/decide

This is a good question. For those who are not aware of the meaning of opting out; opting out is when you warn credit bureaus not to sell your information. There are many credit bureaus that make money by selling data. When you tell them not to sell your data, the credit bureaus will not sell your data for prescreen offers, but they can sell your data on credit reports when people purchase them. Opting out has been a long tactic and as one of the first things to do. This is because we want to ensure that credit bureaus make less money. If everyone opted out with their clients, the credit bureau would lose a lot of money. Therefore, if it is just for that tactic alone, everybody should opt out with their clients. Another reason for opting out that is supported by veterans in this industry is when bureaus are inundated with requests for information. The credit bureaus are mostly concerned with the data they are selling being accurate, but they are not concerned with the accuracy of the data that they can’t sell. The credit bureaus usually slide on the information they can’t sell, as opposed to the information they can sell. Therefore, opting out is a tactic that can’t hurt anything.

Yes, she should change one of the cards to the one that is most accurate. For instance, if the driver’s license has the most recent name “her married name or maiden name”, she should get the S.S card matched. If the cards are matched, her files will not be divided into two at the bureau.

YES. The best place to add authorized credit lines is http://www.boostmyscore.net/decide

You can also suggest your clients to add a join accounts on their credit. It is a little harder to find but works better then just authorized user.

Can a credit repair company get in trouble putting this suggestion in literature that accompanies the client’s paperwork?

NO, it is legal. I suggest that you do that since it is a great tactic. You should then follow-up to make sure that they do it.

You can combat this tactic by adding new account. Using that tactic, you can add a 10000-dollar trade line which will help offset it in some way. The credit card companies use that tactic to minimize the so-called “contingent liability”. The contingent liability is the available balances that the consumers can use and the balances that the credit company would have to make available. The reason why credit companies are reducing the max limit is because there is need of a more strict government regulation. You should blame the government for that.

If it shows on the title search after it been deleted from the bureau, chances are that they are not tax liens. You are not supposed to remove tax liens from the title searches because they are not showing on the bureau. This is because, you cannot show up on the bureau and claim that tax aliens are not there. The title search is going to be more in-depth than the credit bureau and there is no actual insurance on the line for such cases, therefore, you will not get around using that line.

If you request for verification from the collection agency, they are not obliged to give it to you, however, if you request for validation, they have to give it to you. The verbiage inside the letter must clearly state what you want from the collection agency. If you have sent three letters and they have failed to respond, I would suggest that you should file a complaint letter to the Attorney General, the FTC, to the QQQ, to the BBB, to the EIEIO and any other agency, so that the collection agency can respond to you. I would also recommend that you should find an attorney to sue the collection agency. If you get an attorney who is used to such cases and knows how to handle them well, the customers could get some cash too.

In my opinion non-profit company for making a profit is still a profit corporation. According to the law, all nonprofits are exempted from certain parts of the law; however, if you are acting as a profit corporation with the non-profit status you are not immune to the law. If you are using one law to bypass another law, FTC can attack you and close down the organization. If you are operating as a non-profit with true non-profit ties, FTC has no issues, but if you are trying to hide the identity of your business by acting as a non-profit while you are not doing any non-profit activities, FTC will attack you. You should do free things of value to the community that are legal. FTC will come after you if they feel that you are not truly acting in the eyes of what a non-profit is supposed to be doing in the spirit of the law. In many segments, the words, ‘in the spirit of the law’ are used to mean that the lawyers argue based on provisions provided in the law. In the spirit of the law, FTC is able to decide and know the profit making and non-profit organizations. For non-profits, the moral standards have to be a bit higher compared to the profit making corporations. They don’t collect upfront money for a reason and there are many companies which make a lot of money without calling themselves non-profit. I am not degrading that word ‘in the spirit of the law’, but I am just waiting for FTC to come out and start doing things like that for this industry. This will take away the exemption from non-profits when many people become profit non-profits.

From the statement that they made, whether their work is legit or not, I can conclude that they are not compliant. Depending on the law, to put funds in escrow may comply with the law and may not comply with the law. The issue at hand that I am looking into is compliance. Many states don’t allow people to put money in escrow because escrow agreements are not created by a third party but they are probably created by the company. There are many reasons why many states don’t allow escrow agreements; therefore, to put money in escrow doesn’t mean that they are complying with the law. If they charge after the work is done, then they are complying with the law. In certain states like Florida, they allow the company to collect upfront payments and put them in escrow until after the work is completed. There are few states that are like Florida where most states don’t allow money to be put in escrow. If they are saying that they guarantee to remove every item then they are not compliance since they cannot guarantee everything. Under the law, it is impossible to guarantee everything. In the past, we have seen scams like this where they have it inside Equifax, Experian or Transunion. I am not trying to say that this company is a scam: maybe they have something unique, maybe they have found a flaw in the law or maybe they have something with the president of Equifax. Whatever the reason might be, they cannot come out and guarantee everything. If they manage to do it, then it would be great for the customer. Although I am not saying that this company is a scam, but in most cases, these are short-lived scams, so don’t become part of it.

If a client demands a refund, you should refund the money. This is because it is important to you as a business to have happy customers with no complaints to the FTC and BBB.

One of the most important things that you need to know about car repossession is that on LawDog.com, you can look up at your actual state’s statutes and determine what is needed in your state for repossession. In most cases, there are many flaws that are committed during repossession because most people are concerned with repossessing the car and are less concerned with complying with the law. There is a possibility that some things will be done improperly. For example, in some states, before a car is repossessed, the repossession company, the financier or the lender must report to the police that they have repossessed a car. One of the main reasons why you must report to the police is to avoid scenarios where you may call the police after the car has been repossessed and claim that it was stolen. According to the law, the repossessing company must report to the police within 24 hours after repossession. In many cases, if they don’t report within 24 hours then that is a ground for removal. In most states, repossessions have a redemption period where the consumer is allowed to pay back the debt and get the car back or pay off the balance and get the car back before it is sold at auction. In cases where the repossessing company doesn’t give the consumer an ample notice for redemption, they are violating the law by failing to give the customer ample time to rectify the situation. The account can be removed if they can’t prove that the actually sent the redemption notice to the consumer. This is because, that is a violation of the law and they are using it as an advantage over the consumer. In some states, repossessing companies can sue the consumer for deficiencies. Therefore, if the consumer sues them and they counter-sue the consumer, you should make sure that the consumer is not in a bigger trouble.

This is all about expectations. The expectations that you set with the customer right from the beginning is very important. For you to succeed, you must set again and again and send the customers a follow up letter indicating the importance of information in that letter. You also have to give the customer multiple channels by which they can get back to you. Using email is not recommended since it is prone to security issues. The use of secure fax and use of portal is an effective way to send clients fax cover sheets which will contain your fax on it. Another way of effective communication is sending pre-addressed stamped envelopes to the clients. All the effective mechanisms will make it easier, but you should follow up using phone calls, faxes and messages indicating the importance of getting that information. You should also explain to the clients that if they fail to follow for a month, you will fire them and that will result in serious repercussions on their credit since it will not be fixed.

This a great question. I will be bringing an expert on foreclosures, which has some great techniques, tactics and experience as I do in the next seminar. We will combine our skills and tactics to do a seminar specifically on foreclosures and short sales and how they are reported. The main thing that I am telling everyone is that they should look for inaccurate information and launch a dispute immediately. You can also look at the method of verification that was used by asking questions like, ‘what was the method you used to verify this, how did you get this information from the creditor, because this information is incorrect?’ You should not only focus on the credit bureaus, but you should also focus on the creditors since they are liable for reporting inaccurate information. For example, if a short sale is reported as a foreclosure, that is inaccurate information. The customer should consider filing a suit against them at small claims court. However, I always say that I am not the person who should be advising people about small court claims, the advice should come from an attorney. If you do it that way, you will not be seen as practicing the law without license. Therefore, you need to learn the process, so that you can help in educating the attorney to ensure that they provide effective services to customers. If you are caught practicing law without a license, that attracts a bigger fine than all the money that you are going to make on the credit repair. It is not just the act that could be incorrect and it is not just the foreclosure, it’s whether the filing number is correct, is the account number of the mortgage correct, is the balance correct, on short sales does it show ‘0’ balance or does it show deficiency? Was the deficiency supposed to be waived? Those are the different things that you can ask for and debate as part of the actual accounts. Therefore, there are many things that could be wrong on those accounts and you can easily get them off.

NO, online disputes don’t work. I will make it simple and brief: never dispute online. There is a whole article here that describes why you should never dispute online and why it doesn’t work for the consumer. Trying to dispute online only benefits the bureaus and it tears away the consumers’ rights under the FCRA.

http://turbodisputecrm.procredit.com/

It is important that you send as much information as possible. For people who don’t know, you can automatically print your ID together with the dispute letters. Therefore, it is printed as dispute letter/ID docs where you can find it on the portal. A letter is easy to identify if it has an ID, so it is important we allocate enough space for people to attach dispute letters together with IDs.

It is important that you send as much information as possible. For people who don’t know, you can automatically print your ID together with the dispute letters. Therefore, it is printed as dispute letter/ID docs where you can find it on the portal. A letter is easy to identify if it has an ID, so it is important we allocate enough space for people to attach dispute letters together with IDs.

A collection cannot be re-aged under Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and Fair Credit Reporting Act. The acts state how long items can be reported and if there are violations of the act.

if any information in the account is inaccurate, outdated or unverifiable, the information has to be removed. The information reporting on the account may include the public record account. For instance, if they are reporting that the account shows 0 assets and 0 liabilities on a bankruptcy account, then that account is reporting inaccurate information. This is because if you had 0 assets and 0 liabilities, you would not be bankrupt. That represents inaccurate information in a bankruptcy account and it will be disputed as inaccurate reporting.

There is no clear cut method of determining which accounts should be disputed first since every client is different. Depending on the customer goal and profile, you can determine which account to be disputed first. For example, when a customer needs 10 points, you may want to go inquires after inquiries if you have many inquiries. Therefore, to determine which account that will be disputed first, it will be based on the customer goals and the duration you think the customer will be in the program. If you compare a client with fingerprints, every client is different but they all have thumbs and fingers.

To educate customers is the best and proven method when marketing. If you have an educational mindset where you give the clients education based on what they need, they will love to be involved in your business. You can also create e-Books and you should go to the community and provide them with educational seminars and seminars.

In this scenario, you should challenge it directly at the bureau. This is because the bureau should provide a method for you to contact the data furnisher. If the bureau doesn’t provide you with the method, they are violating the law and you can challenge it by launching a dispute.

It is a basic principle that you don’t want clients who are PIAs. If you clients become PIAs, you should eliminate them from the process. This is because, you don’t want a scenario where clients expect instant results and they don’t listen to the reasonable expectations that you have set for them. Among the clients that you don’t want, are clients who are delinquent on their bills. This is because if they cannot afford their current bills, they will not be able to afford credit repair and the success rate is going to be very low. A good measure before you start the process is 6-12 months from the last date the client were derogatory on anything. Whether you call your services; credit consulting, credit repair, credit rebuilding, credit restoration, and other names, you must have a variety of product and services to offer the clients. Some of the products that you can offer clients include; rebuilding products, adding trade lines, education and starting a rebuilding process with secured cards. This implies that it is not always about deleting and writing dispute letters.

Bank of America and Citibank have the best secured credit cards that you can offer to your customers. The two banks offer a new account to the customer unless they have been defaulted. Orchard Bank, Premiere Bank and First Premiere Bank report to all the three credit bureaus. They have secured cards offering your client a good platform to establish new credit. It is important to realize that the main aim is not to get rid of the bad debt, but also to establish new good credit. One of the ways to establish new good credit is by having secured cards. You should explain to the customer not to be concerned with the fee because they will be more expensive. The customer should realize that it is more costly to have a bad credit than to pay for secured credit cards.

When you are working with clients, you can talk to them about what has happened in the past, but you should not guarantee them any specific results. I hope I will have time to talk about compliance, but for now, you should focus on fixing the client’s credit. You shouldn’t promise a time frame and a score increase since the process is unpredictable.

The law prohibits credit bureaus in providing inaccurate information. It is also illegal for data furnishers to provide inaccurate, unverifiable and outdated information to the credit bureaus. In cases when the account is accurate, but the information regarding the account is unverifiable and inaccurate, they must delete the information. The law is simple and it states that if they cannot prove the information, they must remove it from the account. FCRA states that credit bureaus must report 100% accurate information in a timely manner. In our case, to state that it is illegal to have accurate information removed from a credit bureau is false. This is because if the information is accurate, but unverifiable, it has to be removed as stated in the law. You should talk to many people, write an article and quote specific sections of the FCRA to make more people aware of the law. People should also know that it is not the credit repair companies that are placing erroneous or unverifiable information in their files; it is the credit bureaus that are allowing the data furnishers to break the law every now and then. This is why we need more people to fight them so that they comply with the law.

In the upfront process of selling to your client, you must ensure that you tell the clients to get the documentation back to you. Therefore, you must explain to the clients that you will not do much, if they don’t provide the information they receive from collection agencies and credit bureaus to you. As part of the explanation, you must show the clients that although it looks like a junk mail, the mail contains information that you need to help them. Once you have written the mail, you should upload it through the client portal for the information to be successful. If you are a portal member, you can email it to me, fax it to me or use any other method as long as the information is delivered. In this business, there are many people who will just send out the next round of disputes. I am not against sending disputes, but I am not of for it. Although, sending disputes could be an effective tactic to get that next round, you need to have it well planned with the clients. If the client does not respond, then you have to consider firing them. From my experience, I have fired clients in every business that I owned. I cannot remember a business where I didn’t fire a client for one reason or another. If you have a client who is unproductive, there is no reason to keep such a client as a potential liability. You should have peace in your life by letting the clients know that you will fire them. Another principle you must adhere to is that you should not take money from a client if you are not going to work.

Earlier in the call, I sent information for you to login, so that you can check your client’s updated reports. When you login, you will only see the updated reports with no scores. Some people use monitoring services such as Transunion that provides updated scores. Such services provide fact less scores, but you will see the update reports together with the scores.

The credit reports from the bureaus are the best to use for accessing the client’s situation. You should visit http://www.myfico.com/, to learn more about the scores.

It is simple to dispute when it is coming from the consumer. If an attorney tries to dispute, he can do it on his attorney letter-head. I have issues with fact of forfeiture when an attorney places the disputes. For all attorneys on the call, you should write down that FACTA came out and gave new rights to consumers such that they can dispute with furnishers. From the law, the attorneys are stripping the consumer some rights when they don’t dispute on their behalf. Their intent was for the attorneys to dispute on customer’s behalf without fail and doubt by the credit repair organizations. In the definition of FACTA, they have bundled the attorney unintentionally since the attorneys can be considered as credit repair organizations. This implies that if an attorney is disputing on behalf of the consumer, the dispute can ultimately be ignored. If you go to the court and fight until the end, you will prove that it is the constitutional right of the consumer to have representation. Although this is arguable, there are a couple of cases that have been lost. For example, consumer was immediately disqualified because they used a credit repair organization or an attorney and a class action sued the primary class member who was disqualified because they used a credit repair organization. As an attorney, if you are thinking all along those rounds, you will fight till the end, but as a credit repair organization, there is no way you would ever get away with sending it on credit repair letter-head, even with a power of attorney or any authorization form. From the FCRA, it states that they ignore requests from credit repair organizations. In the future we hope that something will change, but it might not happen in the immediate future. Therefore, the dispute should be coming from the customer.

No, it is unethical to call the student loan company and lie about your identity. For you to a call-up, you need to have an authorization from the client to talk on their behalf or you call together with the client. You should ensure that your clients are your friends, whereby you can call as a representative of the client since you have more information than the client. There is no issue as long as you disclose that you are acting on behalf of the client. However, you should never call and claim that you are the client.

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Some people states that you should dispute only two per letter, others three per letter and others four per letter. However, the reality is if you think about it as if you were the customer and you found your report with twenty or more things that are wrong, you wouldn’t try to send the disputes in parts of five items per day. You would love to send all the disputes at once. At the last Seminar we had this question and we talked about a client who had 80 negative items in his report. In the first round of disputes the client sent 45 items which translates to over 60% in the first round. If he was disputing 5 per letter, that would take him a lot of time. Therefore, dispute whatever that is incorrect and don’t use ‘not mine’ principles. After disputing with care, it will give you good results. If you dispute using ‘not mine’ principles, the results will not be great.

There are many companies out there that can help you in outsourcing your dispute process. For most companies that are starting up and some companies that have been in this business, it is cost efficient to have someone carrying out the dispute process. This is because when you start dealing with bigger volumes of disputes, the costs will continue to increase. When dealing with large disputes, you have to consider costs for office staff, support staff, stuffing the envelopes and filling in the envelopes. There are also the unavoidable costs involved in running a business such as phones, emails, computers, electric lights and basic utilities in the office. When you consider all those costs, outsourcing is a cheaper and an effective method. I always suggest that before you start using an outsourcing company; try to talk to people who have used one in the past. This will help you to realize their capacity, how they deal with influxes in volume and how they have worked with business in the past. It is always the best practice when you ask a few people who are happy with the service and a few people who are not happy with the service. This will help you in comparing the positives and negatives related with the outsourcing company. It is important for you to realize how they have tried to solve their problems because all companies can have problems. After that evaluation, you will decide the best company to outsource your dispute process.

Good question. If they are reporting that the account shows 0 assets and 0 liabilities on a bankruptcy account, then that account is reporting inaccurate information. This is because if you had 0 assets and 0 liabilities, you would not be bankrupt. Therefore, that is a valid reason to launch a dispute.

I would suggest that you use all the addresses in a rotation policy. This is because the way addresses work doesn’t guarantee that the good addresses at the moment will be good later. Therefore, I would use them in most of the disputes as long as the disputes are legitimate. You should also share the addresses with member of your industry so that they can benefit too.

No, you cannot legally charge the clients for the month. The law states that you can only charge for a service that you have completed. The failure of a client to correspond is very common as it happens from time to time. The right expectations with the clients must be set at the beginning so that they understand their role in the credit repair process. If the client does not understand his/her role, it will be difficult for them to correspond with the process. In scenarios where the client doesn’t correspond, it is better you get rid of them before you end up violating the law for collecting money for things that you haven’t completed. Based on how the contract is set up, you can send another round of disputes.

There are different approaches and tactics used by different people. Therefore, I am not going to say which approach is better than the other. It is your responsibility to evaluate all available possibilities, so that you can find the approach that works best for you. You must realize that the approach which might work for you, might not work for someone else. It is a necessity that you have to go through everything so that you can determine the best method to use.

No, the clock on the date of the first derogatory doesn’t start over. The only time the clock can start over is unless a payment is made on that account.

I always suggest that you should not use postage machine meter. From a government study, it revealed that mail letters are looked at, as much as hand-written letters. I have a whole method of using stamps and hand-writing letters in a simple manner. I will give you my method that I use for hand-writing envelopes because it is cheaper than orienting envelopes from the printer. I will show you how you can save money by doing hand-written letters to get better results than printed letters. Most people are wrong to think that printing envelopes and mailing them to the bureau will ensure that the process is faster than hand-written envelopes. When you realize how this hand-writing technique is easy, you will be blown away. I will explain to you what I do and where I get them so that you can duplicate what I do. Since we are now in software business, we offer them for sale at the credit repair store where if we pay 5 cents, we charge the customer 15 cents. Everyone who will leave a comment on my blog today, I will show him/her on how to do it for free.

Yes, we have heard that credit card companies are closing someone’s credit card while it has a balance. At the moment, the credit companies are under attack from regulators in the banking industry as they have done things that they have never done before. In recent past, the credit companies are actually attacking the best credit candidates, because they don’t make them a lot of money. The best credit clients are being attacked because they are costing credit card companies a lot of money by having contingent liabilities. A contingent liability occurs where a client has an open and available credit line with 30000 dollars but never use it. The credit card company loses money when the client fails to use the card because it is regarded as a contingent liability. As a result, most of the best credit lines are being closed down while having balances. In the past, people who had balances in the cards were only closed down if they were delinquent and non-responsive. However, in the recent past the banking industry has changed, therefore, it is not a surprise to me that more credit card companies are closing people’s accounts when they have balances.

In recent past, the world of credit and banking has been changing rapidly. In answering your question, the previous answer would be no, where “Business Account,” either loan or credit, don’t show up on your personal credit report. Most part of the answer is still no; however some consumer lenders who have recently entered in the corporate lending arena, have reported business credit on the personal credit. One of the consumer lenders that have taken such an approach is Capital One. In the past, it was only reported after it went negative for sixty or ninety days. Business credit is totally different from personal credit and there are different factors and considerations that determine how business credit is handled. This is because there are few laws protecting business that have a big difference in how business credit is handled. Business credit is purely a money game where it can be manipulated easily with money. This is based on the fact that most reporting agencies want you to pay for things to be reported. In conclusion, the answer to this question is that they don’t show it on personal credit report unless you are late for 60 to 90 days. It is obvious that there are exceptions, but we are currently studying them.

First, we will talk about student’s loans in general. It is an undisputed fact that student’s loans have a great impact on people’s reports. The reason why they have a positive impact on people’s credit reports is because they mostly report in multiple. Although the reports are inaccurate, when one account reports 3, 4, 5 accounts, it is reporting 3, 4, 5 positive accounts and thus it is a great deal for people. The problem comes in when the late are reported and it reports in 3, 4, 5 accounts. That is a big negative since you will have accounts that are in multiple late. When you attack, you must ensure that duplicate entries don’t hurt in duplicate, however, the base line questions comes as what to do next when you are left with one account. Most of the student’s loans have an amnesty program. You should work directly with the loan provider and talk to them about the amnesty program. In most cases, the amnesty program applies when you make the next 12 payments on time. You should get it corrected from the provider directly and I am sure it will be successful.

If the credit score went down by 10 points, it means that there was a lot of positive information on those accounts that were retaining the backup history of those accounts. For example, if the account was five years old, it affected the average age of the accounts, the mix of creditors and the utilization ratio if any of the accounts was evolving and open. If the account had a good credit history, where in two years you had only one late payment, the good history is lost too. If you make such a mistake, it is part of the learning process. I would encourage people to participate in educational processes through Seminar, Biz-Box and leaving testimonials on the portal.

I am not saying that credit repair companies shouldn’t charge a set-up fee to get started on their file, but the law under CROA states that a company can only charge for a service that it has completed. As the CROA states, you should not charge for anything unless the service has been completed. In defining the contract, you must define the type of service you are charging and how you are charging, how to pay for the service and when payment is done. The initial set-up fee must include all the details including what it covers and whether your first round of disputes is part of the set-up fee process. You must make it clear that the set-up fee is only charged after work has been completed. A set-up fee is legally allowed to be charged based on CROA, however it is the people charging the set-up fee that are exorbitant. They charge a fee that is not commensurate with the work that they are performing. Therefore, you must make sure your work is commensurate with the fee you are charging. For example, we had a contract with 17 different items that were part of the set-up fee, and said that the client would be charged only after those items were. If you are a Biz-Box member, there are different cases and approaches that you can find on our credit repair store

You have respond to Equifax requesting for explanation on why each item is in dispute. If you used the same reason on all items, then your disputes are frivolous. I doubt you used the same reason since I have talked about this in the past. For those who are listening for the first time, you need to find an actual reason for each item and dispute all the accounts. If you have already messed up, you now have a chance to rectify in the future.

No, the broker’s tri-merge is less accurate than any online compliant. This is because the broker’s tri-merge has room for potential errors during the merge process. It is not clearly separated from others, so I always suggest that you should get the actual report from the three bureaus (Equifax or Experian or Transunion). A merged process made by a computer is always prone to errors. If you want to get accurate and the actual reports, you should visit Jasonfalco.com. Sometimes you have to be realistic, such that if you want what is more accurate, you have to be faster to reduce inefficiencies. There are some online tri-merges such as My Credit Keeper and True Credit that work in a faster way.

In answering this question, I want to highlight some facts that are clear and simple to understand. When you work with an attorney, it is a great experience since they will counsel your company and they will help you in creating dispute letters. However, you must realize that a non-lawyer cannot be a partner in a law firm. As a non-lawyer you cannot pay an attorney to do work for one of your customers unless you are regarding a lawyer referral service. According to the law, the attorney must only be contacted directly by the customer. Therefore, you need to work with attorneys on a scale that is best for you. The attorney can pay you for some work they don’t want to execute such as expert witnesses, advanced investigations and detailed analysis of credit reports

Before you begin to dispute a foreclosure, you must realize the problem with it. In most cases, short sale is reported as foreclosure using a combination of tactics between what you are doing at the original creditor and what you are doing at the bureau. In most foreclosures, they are reasonable based on the information inaccurately reported and you are suing the original creditor to report them properly. There is no ideal time to launch the dispute; it all depends on the information being reported inaccurately.

No, it is not a must that an attorney should be involved in the dispute process. Consumers can launch the dispute process on their own without involving an attorney. The consumers can dispute on their own letterhead and there is a marginal difference with the attorneys overhead.

This is a debatable topic because every client is a thumb print, and therefore, a little bit different from each other. If everything on the clients account is reporting accurately, then there is no advice on that case. Just like clients, even if all thumbs a little bit different from each other, they are all thumbs.

If the clients cannot afford your fees, you should remove them from the program. If they cannot afford your fees, they will not be able to afford their current bills on top of the fees. If they think of taking a loan so as to pay the fees, that is not the best option to consider because they might default on the loan. I know some companies that are good in doing that, but it is tough for a client’s if they take that option. I haven’t concluded on the best opinion on this, but if the client wants a loan to complete your fees, they have a problem. This is because they will have a revolving line of credit and you cannot collect your upfront fees. Another problem is that, if the client gets a revolving line of credit, they can use it for other purposes apart from your fees. This makes it a tough issue to talk about.

Yes, one of the benefits of a branch is that you need to be bonded in each state. The state requirements matter when you want to give one bond for each state. If the bonds are fairly expensive, spreading out the cost of that bond can be beneficial. This is why some people have benefited from the branching concept for mortgages. Currently, I am working consulting with a company that is doing branching and I am sure that they will be successful. Therefore, I would like more people to venture in this business.

Yes, piggybacking works. I think it is immoral and unethical when piggybacking and you’re buying the trade line because you are asking a lender to make a decision based on the wrong information. This is part of undermining the banking industry for the lack of ability to underwrite. Although piggybacking work, I don’t like the way it has been used in the past few years. It is a proper way when you use piggybacking with family members, if the person has legitimate access to the card. That is my opinion and although some people disagree with it, that is what I think about piggybacking.

When you are disputing an old account, it does not going affect the score in the account. When you dispute an account, it does not re-age since the date of the last activity is not affected. The date of last activity is only affected when payment is made on the account. When payment is made, the date of last activity changes and the account is new again. However, in case of a dispute, it does not change the date of last activity in the account.

On the BBB issue, I have set a little bit of the class action because they have started to fall back. I did some little wacky things by sending each of the BBBs some information that we will class action against them. I am not saying I had anything to do with the way they are changing but hopefully I helped. Of course I will not get credit for it, but ultimately we have seen the BBB’s change in its policy where they are rating credit repair companies as long as they don’t take upfront fee. It is fairly simple, such that they are currently having a rating for credit repair companies that don’t take upfront fee and credit repair companies that take fees upfront. The credit repair companies that take upfront fee automatically rare while those that don’t take upfront fee are rated. You should call your BBB and explain to them that you don’t take upfront fee and you are willing to provide them with a copy of the contract and other verifiable information. You should tell them that you will provide anything that they need so as to show them you are among the good guys who have been in the business for years. You have no compliances and reasons why they should have rated you in another way. In the past two months since they started changeover, everyone who has come back and did it has had success. Before the changeover, it was difficult to have success. Everybody is really changing over to ensure that your contact is clear and you don’t take upfront fees. This will ensure that your website matches your contract. They will investigate and try to find a way not to do it, but hey will realize what they are up against in the number of people coming out and saying we will sue them. There is no problem in restarting that effort since it seems it was futile and we have accomplished what we wanted. I was not doing it for money, but I was doing it for business as a whole. All you need to do is to go out there and provide them with the contracts and if they start to complain again, we will start to back up again. We will see some great success rates where we will have some A’s and B ratings. That makes me really happy since they are starting to get back on track.

The best place to get new leads are from referrals. What you need to do is to partner with people in a mortgage space who see people denied, and you become their ‘When department’ explaining to them the value of having another department that brings back to them the customers that would be approvable. Also you should not be shy to ask people who else in their families would benefit from our great service. You should ask whether they feel that the service is a value that they would certainly like other people to benefit from the same type of service. We were talking to people and our loan officers were asking for referrals when they are filling original applications. Most of the people will give you referrals because they are happy that you will help them. At the time of filing the applications, people can give you referrals as they wait for approval. If the applications are denied, people will rarely give you referrals. As long as you are providing them value and information while educating them, they will most likely give you referrals. The best principle to succeed is to ask for referrals where you should not be afraid to ask referrals from clients. The best way to make more clients is asking for more referrals everywhere you go. This is a way of making yourself known by clearly stating what you do. Your job description should state “I am not a credit expert and I am not a credit consultant, but my work is to change lives” .If people ask you how you will change their lives; the answer should simple, ‘to fight the credit bureaus’. You should indicate that you fight the inaccuracy and all the false information that credit bureaus put on people’s files erroneously. A research from a government study indicated that 75% of the files have errors.

For late pays to be removed, it depends on whether you are working with a small or a big bank, how flagger the late pays were and how old they were. One thing that you must review is the fair credit building act. This is where you place an inquiry request for detailed history of variety of different things on the account. If they are revolving accounts, that could be an easy way of using FCBA technic.

A collection agency inquiry should not count as a hard inquiry. A collection agency inquiry should count as an account review and it shouldn’t count the score. In many instances, skip tracing is counted as a hard inquiry, so that a statement is produced when you send a letter back with a threat to sue for the polling credit report without a permissible purpose.

The ‘not mine’ has gone old, since it has been played out and if you are starting a relationship with a client, you don’t start it by asking them to know you or to like you. The most important thing is for clients to trust you. It is not great to build relationships by telling clients “I am going to lie for you, I am just going to say that none of these are yours”. This is not the way you build a relationship where you tell the clients that you are going to lie for them. This is the reason there are many inaccuracies in credit report. A government study revealed that 75% of credit reports contain errors. The credit bureau already knows that the information is not yours, so you don’t have to say “not mine”. You can tell them to prove that the account is yours. In 99% of the cases, the account can’t be proven. You can also tell them, “please prove that this account has been reported in a way that it does not violate my rights that are granted to me under fair credit reporting act”. If you understand the law, you will know that they will fail as long as you don’t use “not mine”. There are many things that can be wrong; if it is account details, the details of the account are what can be disputed that they are being reported inaccurately. So just don’t look at the account as a whole there are many other advanced technics that we have talked about.

Credit repair is a tough business and one of the reasons why it is tough is compliance. For compliance purposes, you are looked at from every angle by attorney generals and ATC and then you are ridiculed by BBB. This implies that you need to be proactive on everything that you do. I will tell you that it’s better and faster to get rid of clients from right up front than it will be to fight the battle dealing with their complaints to the FTC and BBB. You don’t want to deal with someone who is going to imply your business and make your employees unhappy while making yourself do more work to just try to satisfy someone. You want to give a strong value and you want to get a value in return; it’s all about value given for value received. You don’t want to deal with a client who doesn’t understand how you are setting their expectations and their true expectation. You need to set up the client at the beginning and say “this is what you should expect. No, we can’t guarantee anything, and if you truly need your credit repair in three days, then I am probably not the right guy for you. I am probably not the one, because I will not be able to exceed your expectations”. If the client’s goal is to buy a house and do it as fast as he can, you may be looking at the report differently than if their goal is to have a perfect credit report. You must give the client what he wants by advising them and educating them along the way. If the clients are 10 point away from the 640 score, you must find a way to get that 10 points fast where you can start working on things that might take more time. You don’t want a client who can’t afford the program. You don’t want just force-feed people into the program, because they have whatever they set up. You don’t want to just take their money and move on; you want to sure that you add more value. It is probably not a good idea to have clients who are currently late on any account. From 6 to 12 month is the key indicator to determine whether or not someone should be in your program. If they are currently behind then it is not a good idea unless it has been 6-12 month for them to clean up their act.

If the client has not sent the incoming letters to you and you have asked for them via phone, email, etc., and you are now waiting before the next round of letters is sent, can you legally charge the customer for the month if you have not done any work (assumes they are paying monthly)?

NO, you can only charge for a service. It is normal when a client fails to respond happens from time to time. From the beginning, you must know that customers sometimes don’t respond. The proper expectation must be set for customers from right at the beginning, so you can make sure that they understand their role in the credit repair process. If clients fail to understand their role, they may fail to respond. You need to get rid of such clients before you wind up and collect money for services that you have not offered. It is not ethical to send another round of disputes based on the set up of the contracts.

One of the benefits of being a branch, depending on the state’s requirements, you will only have one bond for that state. If the bonds are fairly expansive, it can be beneficial if we spread out the cost of that bond. This is the reason why some people benefited from the branching concept for mortgages. I would like to see many people going into this business. I am currently working on it and I am having a personal consultancy with a company currently using branching concept for mortgages. I think that they are going to be very successful.

Yes, you can do good amount of business by placing free listings and free classified on websites. People love using free resources. I am a marketer and the best principle in marketing is that you must find the easiest way to market your business so as to yield the best results. In business you need to start from scratch where using classifieds spots like back page, Craig’s list, and eBay, you can make a good fortune by transforming those leads into sales process. For better results, you just can’t be rolling out business cards; you must have a sales process. The sales process will ensure that you to convert a suspect into a prospect, and the prospect turn into a lead. Eventually, the lead turns into a client and as you develop your relationships, the client turns into a never ending referral agent. That is part of creating business.

The ‘not mine’ principle has gone old since it has been played out and if you are starting a relationship with a client, you don’t start it by asking them to know you or to like you. The most important thing is clients trusting you. It is not great to build relationships by telling clients “I am going to lie for you, I am just going to say that none of these are yours”. This is not the way you build relationship where you tell the clients that you are going to lie for them. This is the reason there are many inaccuracies in credit report. A government study revealed that 75% of credit reports contain errors. The credit bureau already know that the information is not yours, do you don’t have to say “not mine”. You can tell them to prove that the account is yours. In 99% of the cases, the account can’t be proven. You can also tell them, “please prove that this account has been reported in a way that it does not violate my rights granted to me under fair credit reporting act”. If you understand the law, you will know what they will as long as you don’t use “not mine”. There are many things that can wrong, if it is account details, the details of the account are what can be disputed if they are being reported inaccurately. So just don’t look at the account as a whole there are many other advanced technics that we have talked about.

One of the great things in our country is that we have judicial system and a contractual system in law that government people are in it. In compliance with those laws, people get into the contracts with one other. When people are getting into contracts, in our system (The USA), the government can’t just come in and say that the net contracts are not good. A judge can’t just come in and change a contract, regardless of what the judge says who is responsible; they do not change the existing contract. The responsibility is that person’s, but their original responsibility doesn’t just go away, so if the spouse does not pay it will impact other spouse in credit. There is an article that I wrote a long time ago about this issue, I am trying to dig it out, but I am not sure I can find it. The article was talking about how you can protect your credit in divorce and regardless of the divorce degree it is upon to the judge to decide what is going to be reported on credit. You need to make sure that if something is still on credit, you should not rely on another person to pay for it. If you pay for it, you can go back to court in front of the same judge or another judge and enforce a divorce degree. However, that lender can go and enforce their original paperwork against you for not paying because you are originally responsible to it.

One of the problems associated with tri-merge is inaccurate information. During the merge process, information may be wrong and the broker subjects credit to risk. It is recommended that you should get a copy of the credit report online, and dispute all incorrect info on your credit report. This can be done through a proxy poll; where the client is present or over the phone to ensure there is no information hiding and the client is directly involved in the process. The merge logic produces the tri-merge report, and sometimes causes an error when viewing the report. If you are still using tri-merge, you should send a copy of the file with information to tri-merge with a dispute message stating, “Hey, I would love some clarifications on some accounts, my mortgage lender has said that these accounts have identity issues, please identify the relevant accounts so that we can determine whether they are verifiable, accurate and within the allowable reporting time-frame”. To solve disputes, you can either go to Equifax or you use tri-merge. Use of tri-merge is not recommended since your referral relationship is put at risk.

I will explain why you should never mail a request for written verification. This is because the collection agencies don’t have to verify the account, but they have to validate the account. Fair Debt Collection Packages Act states that the collection agencies have to validate your account based on your request. If you request the collection agencies to verify your account, they will just validate the account. A dumming letter is the initial letter that goes out of a collection agency. Upon receiving the dumming letter, it gives the client 300 days to respond and if the client does not respond in 30 days, they will assume that it is yours. Even if we argue all day, the point of question is what you finally do once you have the letter. Once you have the letter you should deny the debt by sending a letter to the collection agency immediately stating, “We hereby absolutely do not recognize this debt. We will only recognize the debt, if you show us the legitimate contract that shows you can purchase the debt or you have the legal right to collect the debt? If you are not showing me that you have the right to collect the debt, then I am not paying. We always wonder whom we are paying the debt when you have more than one collection agency sending you the same notice. We are not trying to dodge the debt, but we are realizing that multiple collection agencies can have the same debt. For the skeptics out there who are saying ‘why don’t you just pay?’ we have another reason. There was a closure case in Florida involving two big banks which I believe it was Chase Bank and Fleet. The two banks were closing on the same homeowner for the same loan. The loan was sold to two different places and one mortgage was sold twice leading to two people foreclosing. If they had satisfied one foreclosure, the second company would have come and foreclosed too. Therefore, if collection agencies don’t show you the right title and the interest and the ability to legally collect the payment, then don’t pay. You should also tell them to show you how they calculated the amount they are claiming you owe them. You should be able to review your original contract after you review the basic calculation of the debt. You should be keen to check whether their calculations violate the original contract. Checking whether they have violated the contract forms the basis of debt validation. If they show you a screen-print-out, it doesn’t mean anything. From a review of staff opinion letters from FTC, it revealed that screen print-outs meant nothing. If you ever go to court with a screen print-out, nine out of ten is just a fail. We will hear from an attorney’s call who can explain much more about screen print-outs.

After the investigations and files are returned, if some accounts are listed as dispute and do not show on the credit file, this means that they are no longer on the credit file. This mostly happens when someone starts a dispute which was not in the report. To avoid this, you should focus on the file to make sure it does not come back.

First of all, I will explain to you how it started. In the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) section 611, in case of disputed accuracy, reinvestigation is required. The reinvestigation required has to occur within 30 days starting from the date the agency receives the notice of the dispute from the customer or reseller. As soon as the bureau receives the customer’s dispute, they have 30 days or 45 days to carry out the reinvestigation. The law states 30 days but it can take 45 days if it is a free report. I did not have time to click the Act, but I believe it is from the Fair and Accurate Transactions Act where they have clarified many things including the credit stores disclosures and an identity theft provisions. In the FCRA, I clicked and read on a couple of other things and ultimately everyone should have questioned over this. This is because many people usually ask “how can we legally remove items?” .To solve this, you can actually send them an email and make it part of your package and part of your email campaign. You should tattoo it in your forehead, but you should always remember and share it with as many people as you can. It is clearly defined in the FCRA, where it clearly states that “If after any investigation under paragraph (1) of any information disputed by a consumer, an item of information is found to be inaccurate or incomplete or cannot be verified, the consumer reporting agency shall: (i) promptly delete that item of information from the file of the consumer, or modify that information, as appropriate, based on the results of the reinvestigation; and (ii) promptly notify the furnisher of that information that the information has been modified or deleted from the file of the consumer.” If you find that many customers are leery about your service, you should always use the law. You should copy and paste the law and put it out there on every piece you can so as to create customers awareness on the consumer protection laws that protect them. You can put the information in banners, flyers or anywhere else consumers can reach. In the FCRA, you will find out more things that will help you and your business. There should be a prompt notice of dispute to furnisher of information. When the bureau gets information “before the expiration of five-business-day period which begins on the date on which a consumer reporting agency receives notice of a dispute”, the BIG THREE must provide notification of the dispute to any person who provided any item of information in dispute. According to the law, they must give information to the data furnisher within the five days. After receiving the information, the data furnisher carries out relevant investigation. Relevant information refers to the information you put inside your dispute letters. Any accompanying documentation is where we will have to dig down. In a recent testimony to a congressional board and congressional sub-committee, there was investigation from an Equifax employee, Transunion employee and an Experian employee where they clearly and conspicuously disclosed to this congressional hearing what that means. The law states that they should send all relevant information, but actually, they don’t send relevant information. As employees of the company, they can’t send relevant information because there is no opportunity to do it. If you were to attach a document, there is no physical way inside eOscar, inside the Transportation Mechanisms and Communication Tools that employees have in place. There is no way for them to send that relevant information back to the data furnisher since there is no browse and attach feature, and the notes field is limited. When you write three paragraphs on why you dispute an item, they knock it down to a three digit code. The three digit code is what is transferred although they have space for two three digit codes. This implies that if you have three reasons for dispute, they can’t abide by the law unless they have made duplicate disputes and they have four spaces. In all cases they just don’t do that and they can’t do that. This is the main reason I am passionate about this because the system is designed for the consumer to have bad credit. Once consumers start having bad credit, it is not easy to fix it. This is the reason I am coming out and saying that you need to help consumers in this by knowing the FCRA. To understand these complexities, you need to read this article which I have provided for free. I want you to study the article so that you can help your clients realize that credit bureaus are breaking the law every day. They can’t physically do a dispute when there is large amount of data because there is no way to transfer relevant data. When a dispute comes in, a 3 digit code is generated and sent to the data furnisher. The data furnisher through eOscar sends the information back, and if there is no enough information, the credit bureau is at fault since they didn’t provide enough information. This is another way to set up the mouse trap that we talked about.

The first thing that the client should do is to call the student loan company. Most of the companies have an amnesty type of a program where after you are late for a certain amount of time and you are on time for a certain amount of payment; they forgive the late payments and don’t report them. However, if it is inaccurate reporting where they are reporting late in six accounts when it is only late on one account, you should not ask for goodwill but demand for correction. In your demand, you should state that if the fail to correct the information they will face further legal action because they are reporting inaccurate information. In your analysis, you have to dissect the accounts to determine what should and shouldn’t be reported late. If they are reporting information incorrectly, you should demand for corrections or they face legal action.

Reporting of data is based on the date of the last activity on the account. The payment made is regarded as the date of last activity on the account. This implies that it will be reported for the 7 years they paid it off. That will hurt the client’s credit score tremendously. Unless the collection agency is willing to delete the account, there is more harm than good done by paying the account

I saw this question before and I wanted raise it although I don’t have the answer that you all expect. The main problem that I see in this is that the underlying issue of Fannie Mae doesn’t want items that show ‘in dispute’ on a consumer’s credit report. Some lenders don’t want that too because it can skew the actual scoring since when an item is in dispute, the item is not supposed to be scored with negative characteristics. For that reason, Fannie Mae and lenders don’t want it. My debate on this issue is that, there have been issues where the statement and dispute is over, but the item remained. The item disputed by the consumer or the investigation remains, is the verbiage used to deny the items in the eyes of Fannie Mae. In this regard, we are working closely with some higher authorities to explain that it is the consumers’ right to dispute information in case they feel it is inaccurate, out dated or unverifiable. There should be no reason why a federal agency should be denying loans based on the information in the account that is disputed. At the moment, we don’t have great answers on this, but one of the problems we are facing is that if you try to dispute the item to get that statement off, you are going to create a new dispute. This is because there is no way to work on the item, unless there is a dispute in the eyes of the reporting agencies and creditors. Before any formalities are done, I would love to suggest that the letters going to the actual creditors should state, ‘This dispute has ended since the investigation results have been compiled. There is no reason for you to still have that statement on the account, so please remove it now because you are reporting inaccurate information. If you feel you are reporting accurate information then you must delete this account because it is beyond the 30 days that you are allowed to investigate it. Therefore, if you think you are still investigating it, delete it because you have taken too long. If you feel that the investigation is over, remove it, because you are reporting inaccurate information. Either way, you need to correct the information.’ That is what I would be doing directly to the creditors and not the credit bureaus.

As you have stated, the law requires that before reinsertion is done, the consumer must be notified in writing stating the reason for re-insertion. You should write a quick letter to the bureaus stating that you know your rights as stated in the law. The law states that, if an item was deleted because it was outdated, unverifiable or inaccurate, it cannot reappear unless they send me a notice five days before the reinsertion. In this case, there was no notice sent by the credit bureaus, so they violated the FCRA. Therefore, you should speak with the attorney general to pursue legal action against the collection company. If you file a complaint to the attorney general, you should carbon-copy the collection agencies. This is a rare case and I haven’t seen one of those that got slipped back in. When the collection company receives a threatening letter, especially when it’s CC-d to the Attorney General, the item is deleted in a minute. In the Tactical guide, we have many places that you can CC the letter. They include; FTC, BBB, Alliance against Fraud, Consumer Council, Consumer Action Report, CPI, etc. From my personal perspective, I would recommend that you should find someone’s name at the FTC or the BBB, and put their name in the carbon copy. This is a powerful tactic that makes the letter more believable than just the CC to FTC. You should apply this tactic not only to follow-up disputes, but also to initial disputes when dealing with collection agencies. Carbon copying the letter to those places is a powerful tactic and you should use it in such a scenario.

In such a case where I have a copy of the letter, I would launch another dispute on the item with the credit bureaus. When launching the dispute, I would send a copy of the letter showing the proof to my claims. The reason why this happened is because the bureaus kept some old information on the client’s report. We will talk about this in another seminar, but the fact is that bad information is just hidden by the bureau and it never gets deleted from the client’s report. Whether or not that is a good or a bad thing, it is supposed to be a good thing where once information comes off; it is not supposed to come back on. If the creditor wants to re-report the same information that was deleted by virtue of the bureaus having that information in their hidden pile, then they don’t let them just re-report it. Some of the information is leaked back and unflagged, so that the suggestion has the proof that you have sent into the bureaus and that information should be off.

Yes, the age of the account based on the recency of the derogatory period is the major factor in the scoring of the derogatory depending. It is obvious that a derogatory from the last month will affect the credit score more than the derogatory account from five years ago. Although “reaging” is a violation of the fair debt collection practices act, it is a common practice for collection agencies. If you are on a third letter already, sending a complaint to the attorney general or sending a complaint to a Federal Train Commission is a good idea. It is also a good idea continuing requesting a debt validation on the consumer by following up and letting them know that they violated the law. At that point, if the third force doesn’t assist you, you should team up with the local attorney and have the local attorney file a suit in the local court. For some jurisdictions, the attorneys can file to small claims court or at least help the consumer in filing the small claims court. It is not advisable for a credit repair company to help a consumer in doing any small claims actions, so that it can be looked at as unlicensed practice of law. Therefore, it is important for everyone in the industry to work with the attorney and develop relationships with them. You should not play as an attorney so that you don’t cross that debt ugly three letter acronym of UPL where you will be fined. It is always better that you pass it off to someone who knows, who is qualified, who is licensed to do that.

From this case, I want to clarify that having inquires that are a year old doesn’t matter at all, since it doesn’t affect the score in any way. Therefore, if it is not affecting the score, you should not waste your time working on that since it won’t change the customer score. I will talk about a tactic called bumpage. Although I am not going to guarantee the success of this tactic, it has been around for a long time. I have heard great success stories on this tactic for a long time. For those who will try and test the tactic, please report back to us on your success story. The whole concept behind bumpage is the way an inquiry reports on the consumer’s report. The inquiry may be a soft inquiry or a hard inquiry. A soft inquiry is where the checks their own credit while a hard inquiry is when the lender checks the credit on behalf of the customer to determine the features for eligibility. The score is not affected by soft inquiries, but it is affected by hard inquiries. Although there is no scientific approach to this, it has brought great successes in the past. After the customer does soft inquiries where he checks the reports over and over again, he eventually pushes off the hard inquiries. For example, let’s say there are ten inquiries numbered 1-10 where 1 is at the bottom and 10 at the top. If there are two items at the top, as soon as you put another two at the bottom and renumber the items, then the two at the top get knocked-off. This is what we call bumpage since the items at the top are bumping off. Ten is not the magic number since each bureau has its own magic number. The credit bureaus will not tell you the accurate magic number, but in the past we have seen a number between 20-25 times pulling a soft report before it bumps off a hard inquiry. I am answering this question because many people have been asking about it. Personally, I don’t pay much attention to the inquiries because they don’t count much since most customers need you for a long time between 6-12 months. By the time the customers will be done with your service, most of their inquiries will have lost their effect. Thus, you should use the bumpage tactic where you sign in 2 or 3 times a day. When using Experian and Equifax, you only need the report number that you get after your first round of disputes. Using Transunion is a bit different. We recommend that you use an email ID on the app. The email Id doesn’t have to be accurate because they will give you instant access, but it helps in keeping track of the inquiries. You should make sure that you don’t use the consumer’s actual email address. You should use an address that gets forwarded to them as a secondary address. This will ensure that they get a copy of everything and they will be aware of you checking their reports. This is a good method that can be used on the consumer’s reports for checking updates.

Since the Nordstrom account is being reported inaccurately, I would send them a strong letter asking them when they will respond or they will meet me in the court of law. Writing a strong letter is a great tool to get a response from the original creditor.

On the bankruptcy issue, I agree that all items listed in the bankruptcy can show up in the account section, however, on the derogatory issue I don’t agree that all information must be removed.

I will not go into details, since it is not clear whether it is for a client or an individual. From my analysis of the scenario, this situation requires that you deal directly with an attorney. This is because you don’t want to violate the law by trying to give clients information. This can be termed as unlicensed practice of the law.

Since every client is a little bit different, I like to use the analogy that every client is like a thumb print. Therefore, you need to evaluate each client differently based on his/her needs. For example, if a client needs 20 points to get their desired mortgage, you will treat them differently from a client who needs 100 points. You should do your job and charge the client based on the expectations that you set with the client at the beginning. I understand and agree with you that you can’t run a business without profits, since if you are not profitable you’re not going to remain in business. Therefore, I will continue saying that you have to do things in a morally, legally and ethically manner while still ensuring that the business is profitable. The only way you can achieve that is by setting the right expectations. You must make sure that you explain to the customer what you can and can’t do and the different services that you are going to provide to ensure that the clients have the right expectations.

You should go back to the originator and ask for their permissible purpose under the FCRA. The wording of the letter should be, ‘For anyone to oppose your credit, he/she must have the permissible purpose to pull your credit’. That would be the best approach, so that you realize that they have the authority to pull your report. I would also go back at the bureaus and refer to the FCRA, where it states that each item on the client’s report should be investigated. Since they are refusing to investigate it, they are violating the FCRA. We all know that they violate the FCRA every time and they flagrantly violate on inquiries and this leads to the industry taking action against that.

There is no law that states that you cannot request a validation after something has been paid off. The chances of the opposing person responding are very low. I would go at it with that angle since they have no motivation to respond and few will abide by the law. When the fail to abide by the law, they don’t have to remove the account. Therefore, if you carried out TriFactor on an account that has been paid, most of the people will fail to respond. The law doesn’t state that you cannot request validation on an account that doesn’t exist. When moving forward, that is something that you should consider.

From research and experience, English second language speakers handle most of the disputes outside United States. That is the best way for me to say that native English speakers do not handle them. If they have not investigated the letters as you requested properly, you should send them a strong letter demanding for an explanation. In the letter, you should highlight your initial reason and why they need to handle it in a different way. Since I don’t have copies of the letter, it is hard for me to know exactly what you were trying to do or if you didn’t dispute anything. I am a little bit confused because I don’t know what the letters to the creditors or the credit reporting agencies would be talking about, if you didn’t dispute.

One fact that you should understand is that, showing the bankruptcy was dismissed is not a guarantee that it shouldn’t be in the report. Since the report is a public record action, if you have all the court papers, you should send them to the bureaus. If the bureau responds stating that the report was discharged, you have no legal case. However, if they respond and state that the report was dismissed, then you have a legal reason to dispute the item based of inaccurate reporting. This is because the bureaus are reporting something that is inaccurate. We should conclude that, after a report has been dismissed, it can still show within the bureau.

In this case, I would suggest that you send a letter to the bureau stating that the client has moved. In the letter, you should show the new address together with the proof of the new address. Since most disputes are not forwarded out of fear of client’s identity, you should send the client’s new driver’s license and utility bills to the bureau so that they can forward the dispute.

This is a very debatable topic and an attorney would come in hand to help in solving this case. In the eyes of IRS, 1099C is a cancellation of a debt hence it must be regarded as income in most cases. At the moment, if the collection agency is demanding payment, the collection agency was not the one that issued the 1099C because the collection agency was not the original creditor. The original creditor charged off the debt by issuing a 1099C and it was considered as forgiveness of a debt. I would send a letter to the collection agency with copies of 1099C to prove that the debt was charged off and forgiven. In the letter, i would state that we paid all the taxes on the forgiven debt and therefore there have no legal right to continue collecting the debt. We always have an attorney on the call where you can ask for legal opinions if they still attempt to collect the debt after issuing 1099C. For those who want legal opinion on this, please let me know. I will also contact one my attorneys to seek advice on the same issue. After the attorney’s advice, I will have a better approach to this scenario.

This highlights a scenario where the client should have had more education on how things are done. Clients can mess thing up if they are allowed to play a big role. From our case, the clients played a big role and the situations that arose could have been avoided if things were controlled differently. The main problem lies with the instructions and responsibilities that are given to the client. If you are being paid for an advanced tactic, you should ensure that you hold that hand and don’t let it go. From my experience in this industry, I have never seen a collection agency that gives every piece of information of those requested back-up documents. In scenarios like this, I always ask whether they provided you with a contract showing that they had the right to collect the debt and whether they have showed you that the original creditor transferred the right of collecting the debt to them. In most cases, the answer is probably no, and therefore, they don’t provide the information as requested. After realizing that they haven’t fully verified and validated the debt, you should contact and work with an attorney so that he can prepare small claims court documentation. The next step with them could be if they haven’t fully verified the debt, or fully validated the debt, you still can work with a local attorney, and have the attorney help the client prepare Small Claims Court documentation. If you are under jurisdiction, the judge can declare the item that could be eliminated from the bureau.

The HIPPA tactic is only best unless you actually pay the account in full. From our case, using the HIPAA tactic will be a little bit complex. If the payments were due and payable by the medical care, I would go to the bureaus with copies of the insurance policy and tell them that the insurance providers should have paid the accounts. At that point, most of the claims are eliminated. I would pursue all angles where I would go to the individual collection agencies and send debt validation letters along with the alleged account. If the account was in fact related to the client in any way, the payments were supposed to be paid by their active insurance policy. If you are trying to do the advanced tactics and the client is just paying you to do basic disputes, then you are going to be in a losing proposition. At the Seminar, we talked about the tactical guide and we referred to the HIPPA tactic, since those are the tactics that I used to implement when I was in retail business. We used to be paid large amount of money per client and we used to get thousands of dollars for just a few accounts. It was a very different business model where we were not paid 99 dollars a month or anything like that. In the tactical guide, I have described how to go toughest of the tough if the client is paying for it. The tactic cannot be implemented for everyone because you cannot spend a lot of time on a client who is not paying for it. You have to be realistic before you implement an advanced tactic on a client.

This is a debatable topic and there is no specific answer to the question. The first thing that I would do is to dispute all items that are reporting inaccurately in the account. In the dispute statement, I would state that the account balance, high credit and payment amount should not be reporting. However, you should not make a mistake by stating why they should not be reporting. The problem is that if you send bankruptcy papers and they came back to you showing incorrect reporting, the bureaus have the information to correct in their reporting. If the company returns after verifying it, you should go back to the original creditor and show them where they violated the bankruptcy law and Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. This is because they continued collection activity on an account that they are not allowed to collect. The laws are a bit harsh, because the FTC states that reporting or verifying an account is considered as collection activity. Therefore, they you can report violation of the law, if they came back and verified the item after the dispute stating that the balance should not be reporting or the high credit should not be reporting. After that you can send a letter to the original creditor indicating the settlement offer. If the settlement offer is kept in confidence, you will waive any right to collect the statutory damages. The account can be deleted when you waive the rights may be after 3000 dollars statutory damage per account. The attorney can take the file to court and a lot of money is available for contingency filing. For example, if you have five companies, and you make 3000 dollars per account, a 50% ration between contingency and settlement will leave you with a quick 6000 dollars. Therefore, it is a highly profitable exposure when dealing with post-bankruptcy. I usually call it post-bankruptcy litigation and I have told many attorneys dealing with post-bankruptcy how to attack using those methods.

MOV is a great tactic that you used when you disputed the judgement to the credit bureau. If you are talking about the courthouse providing information to the bureaus, then I assume it is some public records. The first thing that you should find out is whether the courthouse in your jurisdiction is working. This will help you in determining whether they report to the bureaus and whether they are a subscriber. It would be help you in your battle if you manage to get something in writing from the courthouse outlining that they are not a subscriber. If the courthouse claims that they have verified an item, you should ask them to show you the method of verification used. If the bureaus fail to give the right information, you should realize that they are not corresponding with substantive proof. You should go back to them with additional information such as a letter from the courthouse stating whether or not they are a subscriber to the bureaus and whether they received anything requesting verification of your account. If you have a judgement which the bureaus claims that they verified it, you must know the method used in verification. From the verification process we will be able to determine whether it was a reasonable investigation and whether they didn’t verify using courthouse. For us to determine whether it was a reasonable investigation for a public record, we should get an expert on public record to examine the case. From experience, we know that bureaus don’t conduct reasonable investigations, so it is a matter of how far we will fight them. A great way to get justice out of this case is using small claims court. However, you must involve an attorney so that you don’t cross that line of unlicensed practice of law (UPL). The attorneys will help consumers in the small claims court action where you can place all the proof that you have. The proof may include the MOV and proof that the letter was sent and they didn’t answer specific questions. You should also show your letter from the actual courthouse indicating that they don’t provide information. The case would be how a credit bureau would actually get this information back if they don’t provide it. Some sort of a settlement agreement could be sent to the bureaus without doing a Small Claims Court, detailing that we have a case that shows you are guilty in a certain way. The settlement agreement must indicate whether they want us to go to court or we settle it as part of removing an item because of inaccurate reporting. That is the approach I would use to handle such a case.

The contract details determine whether all that can happen. As long as you complete what it is detailed as your service to the client in the contract, you will be paid for the set up. However, there is a three day right of rescission given to the client where he has the right to cancel the payment. If you have done some work before the client cancels, then you won’t be paid for that work. Before the rescission period, you can collect the money, but you cannot take the money and use it unless the period is over. The money is yours only after the rescission period.

You can get an F rating because the Federal law surpasses the state law. The state law outlines that you can collect upfront money but the money goes to an escrow account. Therefore, we can conclude that you are only escrowing your money for the services and you are not collecting upfront money for your services. You must keep the contract clear and concise where you are not getting upfront payment. The same case applies in Florida where you can collect upfront payment and it goes directly to an escrow account. All you need is to have an escrow agreement that states that it is an escrow account where you will only receive the payments after the service is completed.

Yes, according to the CROA, the customer is responsible for choosing whether to dispute an account. In the interview process, you must use it properly by giving customer’s enough time so that they can tell you all they want. In the interview, if the customer states that he is not sure about something, then that thing is not verifiable. If you don’t know whether you sign anything to get that account, then that account might not be verifiable. You should be creative and have reasons for questions like, what was the balance? What was the payment? And what was the account?

The original creditor does not continue updating the account after they no longer own it. They still have the data and they have a right to report it, but the can only report the information as long as they own it. Two collection agencies cannot report the same data at the same time. The original creditor can report based on the information they have in their system where they keep on reporting unless the system falls off. We had great success with charge-off being pulled back to the original creditor and the original creditor taking them back and negotiating for payment. For smaller creditor’s, it is a bonus to get their accounts back especially when they don’t expect to get the money back.

Yes, as long as you have the authorization signed, you can call on behalf of the client. The collection must know why you are calling and you should explain to them that you have the documented proofs that you have sent registered letters. You should also collaborate with an attorney as they can get some money after suing the collection company for violating the FCRA. The collection agencies have violated the FCRA by continuing collection activities before validating a debt. You should advice the client to get an attorney who will help the customer in suing the collection agency. The attorney can also help the customers in filling out a Small Claims Court and the client can sue on their own. An attorney is the best in filling out the papers for the client for the Small Claims Court since they are used to that process.

You should go back to the original creditor and tell them that they are reporting one of my clients inaccurate information. The original creditor must change the account status from closed to open since you still have the credit line. If the account is still open, the original creditor must mark it as still open.

I would check the filling to see how docked numbers and case numbers are filled. I would also check to see if they truly have the information to verify. In most cases, they don’t have information to verify whether it is inaccurate reporting or probably something BDIs have been reporting incorrectly. You should find the liabilities in the accounting checks to find out who is holding the records before you ask the bureau how they verify the item. They will probably say that they went to a certain court house and the court house has it. If the court house does not have those records, you can go back to them saying “you verified it here”, but they have said that they don’t have it. You should do that research to find all the information. This will be the best way to solve it.

If there is no response from the credit agency, it is possible the mail is lost. I would recommend that you send the letter to three agencies such that you will be sure of getting a response from one of the three agencies.

There is no better time to help someone that has just been discharged from bankruptcy than the current time. This is because, in bankruptcy, the information on the credit report will be reporting inaccurately and you have to clean it up, so that it does not show negative information anymore. The account and the account number can be reflected, but the account can’t reflect its balance or it can’t reflect the payment amounts or the information other than that the account was included in the bankruptcy. As I discussed earlier, one of the essential part of someone’s post-bankruptcy is that, you must help them establish new credit like the lines in our credit store. You should just go to disputery.com or credit repair store and sign up for more information. This will ensure that you help them get established and you will make money along the way.

Yes, you can do good amount of business by placing free listings and free classified on websites. People love using free resources. You know I am a marketer and the best principle is that you must find the easiest way to market for your business to yield the best results. In business you need to start from scratch where using classifieds spots like back page, Craig’s list, and eBay, where you can make a good fortune by transforming those leads into sales process. For better results, you just can’t be rolling out business cards; you must have a sales process. The sales process will ensure that you to convert a suspect into a prospect, and the prospect turn into a lead. Eventually, the lead turns into a client and as you develop your relationships, the client turns into a never ending referral agent. That is part of creating business

This is because the mortgages are not reporting the current information, but they are reporting the information from the time they were holding the debt. It is not legal for them to continue reporting the old information and they should remove the item from the account. The account history should be updated so that it reflects the current value.

According to credit reporting act, they just don’t have to provide the name and address, they also have to do a reasonable investigation. What you should challenge back is what they do to implement a reasonable investigation. When we request for them to investigate an account, we clearly want them to verify the name and address because we feel certain information is inaccurate. You should request them to conduct a reasonable investigation if there is outdated information. When you follow up, you should request that they send you the method of verification that they used. In most cases, if after you send the request and they don’t respond, you can conclude that they didn’t conduct a reasonable investigation. A reasonable investigation would have yielded different results.

For the industry as a whole having more net branch is going to be imperative for success. For those who don’t know, net branch concept is not quite as franchise, but uses the same concepts as franchise, where you have one licensing body or authority and multiple bunch of offices. A branch manager runs each office and the branch manager gets the share of the income of the branch where they have to invest it. The branch managers are responsible for all the expenses in their branches. Everyone in their own branches does uniform practices, uniform sales technics, business cards, websites etc. I think it is something that is going to expand out greatly, but as with the mortgage branch office concept, it was widely abused by many and there was a ton of fraud that was unavoidable when they set it up. Therefore, I will talk about this again because I think it is a good concept. I am actually consulting with some people who are doing it in a national level right now, so that we can launch it. I think net branches are going to be highly successful.

I understand that if the brokers are not giving a report, there is still a chance for them to be blacklisted by the credit reporting agencies. If you help a broker to avoid being blacklisted, they will make the consumer get a wrong report. Even if you have the actual report, the credit wouldn’t be given to you, but you should make sure that your customers get a new credit report. In the credit report, you will see that the broker didn’t give the credit report and they made referrals from nothing. A client and a credit repair have an agreement that says that they can’t give them a credit report for any purpose unless the mortgage increases. If you want to refer someone to the credit companies, just make sure that all clients have an independent report and they don’t use the mortgage broker report.

One of the great things in our country is that we have judicial system and a contractual system in law that government people are in it. In compliance with those laws, people get into the contracts with one other. When people are getting into contracts, in our system (The USA), the government can’t just come in and say that the net contracts are not good. A judge can’t just come in and change a contract, regardless of what the judge says who is responsible; they do not change the existing contract. The responsibility is that person’s, but their original responsibility doesn’t just go away, so if the spouse does not pay, it will impact other spouse in credit. There is an article that I wrote a long time ago about this issue; I am trying to dig it out, but I am not sure I can find it. The article was talking about how you can protect your credit in divorce and regardless of the divorce degree it is upon to the judge to decide what is going to be reported on credit. You need to make sure that if something is still on credit, you should not rely on another person to pay for it. If you pay for it, you can go back to court in front of the same judge or another judge and enforce a divorce degree. However, that lender can go and enforce their original paperwork against you for not paying, because you are originally responsible to it.

If the credit reporting agency wanted to abide by the law, credit repair companies probably wouldn’t have much business. We realize that it is not profitable for them to abide by the law. They break the law all the time and they have enough money to keep them out of hard work. It is job security that is priority number one, otherwise we would certainly rather be in a different profession and have consumers taken care of properly. Since consumers aren’t taken care properly, we need to step up and do what we need to do. One thing that you need to do is that with every letter that goes to credit bureaus it should have the identification information packed in it. In every letter, you should put as much identification information as they can be requested. Since many people are asking Michael for that outsourcing seminar, I am looking to do a seminar on outsourcing. Michael will let me know how many people are interested and whether it worth doing it or not. We need more than 11 people to hold the seminar and maybe we will dedicate a part of it to them.

Well, you can always call and negotiate with the original creditor. However, you should keep in mind that you should never admit fault because after they note that you have admitted fault they can say, “You know it’s possible that mail room lasted”, it can be possible that it was posted to a wrong account. If the client says why he is late, you can help but if he says he is not sure why he is late then you can definitely call a workout with an original creditor. There is also goodwill, when a person has an account for 20 years or more and he has never been late. In such a case, you can certainly call it one time courtesies when you look into the history of the client and you can understand it is not the intention to the client. When negotiating, you will often get some good responses; however, what you get from them is an ACDV update form. The form is sent to the credit bureaus to update the status of the account. If you want to see how a blank form looks like, you have to stay until the end of the seminar. I will show how it is different from what you think, and I am sure it will be a big one. As I did with the form from updating bureaus, Jason will write that one down and make sure everyone get it.

One thing that I always say is that everyone should be at their best when dealing with a client and help them in the best way that they can. Not all people who are new in the business just do it. If you have clients coming in already, that is a great market for bringing in more clients. In most cases, you can even be more cost-effective by just having someone else actually doing the disputes. You can outsource from a local credit company or a national company that you know and trust, and you can team up with them to handle the disputes. We have many companies that use outsourcing, so there are many credit repair companies that are back in processors. You even don’t know who they are, but they work for other credit repair companies. Many big credit repair companies don’t do their own disputes, they have people who are good in disputes and all they do is to concentrate on marketing. The beauty of online software is that you just need to choose a company that will do the disputes and it can be either a local company or a national company.

There is no law that says that they have to report the settlement as “paid in full” with a zero balance, they choose to report it. The law only states that if they are reporting, they have to report accurate information, but it doesn’t abide them to report in the first place. You must try to educate people at the collection agencies on the law by stating, “If you choose to report, you have to report accurate information, but there is no law that says you must report at all”. I never tell someone not to pay the debt, but I counsel them and advise them in the right manner. Before clients pay a debt, they need to know and be sure that they are paying the correct party. In most cases, that can ever be accomplished at a collection agency and the utilization rate that is noted in the utilization ratio is only calculated on revolving accounts and not on a collection account. Therefore, bringing the account balance down to zero will not be a factor in utilization rate for collection and it wouldn’t affect the credit score. The real reality is that they don’t want to pay someone that might not be the actual holder of the debt. The only way you can know that is through the validation process. Most of the collection agencies can’t validate it, because they just don’t hold the paper.

Yes, you should review information being reported on all the 3 bureaus. If you only have one bureau from the client, you can still do the review. What most people do is to find a couple wrong things with the items that are on the report. As they go through the report with the client, they find some inaccuracies where they usually send a dispute letter to other bureaus that they don’t have the report on. The other bureaus will send back the updated credit report with any changes that were made as well as giving them a full report. Therefore, you can use one bureau if you want, though it is not necessarily accurate. I would look at all the three bureaus initially. Myfico.com will only give you scores for Equifax; that will not give you a score for Experian.

Every time you get reports from each bureau, they have a report number, but you don’t need the report number to do a dispute. If you have the clients social security number, name and identifiable information and accompanying identification documents, that is more than enough of what you need to do a dispute.

The credit reports from mortgage provider or tri-merge report are part of tri-merge agreement that the mortgage provider signs in order to buy them from the provider. They say that the permissible purpose is that they have to use the report for the mortgage application only. I don’t suggest that you use that because you can lose your privileges to pull reports in its entirety. It would be a waste of that purpose to do that and you would be complying with your agreement. If you have a friend who is letting you to pull reports and you certainly don’t want to ruin your friend, I suggest that you should do a “Proxy pol” when a client is in front of you or on the phone with you. You should go online, either on annualcreditreport.com or one of other online sites and get the report that way. You can also go to each bureau and get the reports from each bureau. If you go to annualcreditreport.com and you get it for free, you are helping the credit bureaus because then they have 45 days to respond to any dispute rather than the standard 30 days. By going to annualcreditreport.com and saving couple of dollars may not be the best idea because you are actually pulling away one of the benefits of 30 day cycle and extending it out to 45 days which benefits the bureaus. By going to annualcreditreport.com and giving them an extra time (15 days) may actually hurt the clients. I would suggest when paying for the reports you should go right to each one of the individual bureaus and pay.

It is important that you send as much information as possible. For people who don’t know, you can automatically print your ID together with the dispute letters. Therefore, it is printed as dispute letter/ID docs where you can find it on the portal. A letter is easy to identify if it has an ID, so it is important we allocate enough space for people to attach dispute letters together with IDs.

When you are trying to create a relationship with someone who doesn’t want to do business with you, you have to be patient. From my experience, “I have spent a lot of time for building relationship, but is seems it’s going nowhere”. Depending on the steps that you have taken, I would continue to provide value in the market with minimal costs. You should make some quick massages and short videos and send them to all clients. You should provide more information and more value to the client. After that you should eventually come right out and ask “I hope I have done a good job of coming of as an expertise and hope I have provided this information, but i can ask you a question”. The question will be based on the information that I have provided and I will say, “I am trying to get more people like you to do business with me. What do you think is one of the reasons someone would not like to do business with me”. This will help you to understand why they would and why they would not do business with you. After that you will automatically say, “I want you to help me to help more people. I want you to tell me what can I do differently so that more people like you would like to do business with me?” If they say: “No, you are doing a great job”. Then you will say “What do I have to do to earn your business?” One principle that you should uphold is that don’t be afraid to answer why and never be afraid to ask for money.

Piggybacking is when someone has a positive revolving account or a credit card where it is easy to add an authorized user on. When an authorized user is added, they can get the entire credit history and credit profile of that person and it can be positive or negative. If someone had an American Express account which maybe is 30 years old and has a $30000 limit, and the person owed nothing on it, a person with bad credit could come about and become an authorized user and now all of a sudden he has 30 years of positive history on an account with $30000 limit. That would have a tremendous impact on that person’s credit and in most cases, they would be given a higher credit score than they deserve. Of course, I am against the authorized users that do not have any close relationship with the actual account holder. My main aim is to help someone to establish or reestablish credit whether it is mom or dad, brother or sister, or a family member. I am against purchasing, buying or selling authorized accounts id. Fico is not used by many lenders since they changed their stand points on what is going to be scored. it’s still going to be something that will scored afterwards through a special mechanism for checking and making sure it’s right. The bottom line is that authorized users do not use correct way, since there are other ways to get new accounts.

Actually, you should not try to avoid ACH processing since it is an awesome process. From my experience, I think your success rates are going to be much better, and your charge back rates are going to be less on ACH processing. It is cheaper to process ACH than it is when processing credit cards. I will give everyone a tool, a recourse where they can apply for a merchant account from a reputable and honest company which I have done an extensive due diligence. I will make them available to you but if you talk to a local merchant account provider, you will find out that they are saying that they will do something but automatically they wind up not being able to do it. This is because one company out there holds 90% of the merchant account and the other 10% is divided up among hundreds of companies out there. The person on the sale point just wants you to sign up and will do everything that you can. They often try to squeeze you in under a different heading and then you wind up with a problem on the side of, and months later or weeks later when the company finds out what are you actually doing, then they will shut you down and you will be out of business. If you consider having multiple merchant accounts that covered different products that you sell and you qualify them properly, then you must have a proper merchant account person who is working with you. Even if you have a great account that has a low rate, you should consider getting an account as a backup, if something happens. These merchant providers often shut everybody down within the same industry just because they don’t like the industry. BBB also does the same. Hopefully we will have a chance today to talk about the BBB again. I did find companies that I truly trust and if you go to creditbizblog.com, you will find a short application form, write on it and click submit. The company will contact you right away because they have relationship specifically set up for credit repair companies. So companies will not come back and say you are denied or closed down because you are a credit repair. This is what it’s all about; they exactly know what is happening.

Realtors are a great group to network with and most real estate organizations are more organized them.

I would launch the dispute with the tri-merge company. Since it is possible to dispute with tri-merge companies, I would launch a dispute and request for an update. This is because there is a mortgage broker working for the tri-merge company. When launching the dispute, you should clearly highlight to the tri-merge company, your initial dispute and what Transunion’s replied. After this process, you should send a letter to the Transunion stating “I am being denied grounded on this information that you stated was not reporting”. Therefore, you must rectify this immediately with this company by sending that follow up.

If a mortgage broker pulls a report and the client needs our help, even if the broker does not send the report he pulled, the bureau still sees that a report was pulled by Broker A, and now disputes are being sent by that same consumer who Broker A pulled the credit for. How does not getting the report from the broker help?

I understand that if the broker is not giving a report, there is still a chance for them to be blacklisted by the credit reporting agencies. If you help a broker to avoid being blacklisted, they will make the consumer get a wrong report. Even if you have the actual report, the credit wouldn’t be given to you but you should make sure that your customers get a new credit report. In the credit report, you will see that the broker didn’t give the credit report and they made referrals from nothing. A client and a credit repair have an agreement that says that they can’t give them a credit report for any purpose unless the mortgage increases. If you want to refer someone to the credit companies, just make sure that all clients have an independent report and they don’t use the mortgage broker report

Unfortunately, we were battling with bureaus and people who have much deeper pockets than we do. We need to stay together and organize how we can carry out some of these initiatives. Although we spoke about it at the Seminar, in one of the conference calls we will talk about the National Association responsible for credit repair adviser. If you want to be part of the conference call, just send me a quick email. This is something we are starting to launch and it will be a political action committee to help people inside this industry, fight back and automatically help the consumer. This will not profitable and no one will take a dime out of it. We are looking forward to be part of the industry. However, let’s now focus at your question where the credit bureaus get away by selling consumers’ credit scores. The credit bureaus are the ones that create the scores and the FICO credit scoring model. The FICO credit scoring model is created by FICO where they are the ones who take the data that is gathered. The data actually is gathered by credit bureaus and the information is gathered by credit bureaus. Therefore, based on the information, the credit bureaus are allowed to a licensing fee by FICO where they use their scoring model to come up with the actual FICO score. This is what we say that credit check total is not a FICO score. We therefore, call it a FAKO score “F”, “A”, “K”, “O”, as long as it is any score other than a FICO score. It is a consumer score and there are literally thousands of different potential models. In case of Fico, there are around hundreds of different potential models as well, plus the models that are developed for specific lenders. When a lender starts lending Fico scoring, they always come to you asking, “Do you want us to customize the model; we can customize the model based on xxx. For example, if you’re an automotive lender, you want more emphases placed on their automotive credit history and less emphasis placed on medical collections”. This shows that you can have your scores adjusted as the actual lenders and its custom score. From this and other web sites the credit check total will also have custom scoring models created for them that are not Fico scores. The score will always be different from the actual Fico scores that lenders use. To get the actual score that lenders use, the only place to go only myfico.com.

Yes, the automated responses that are seen more often have to do with OCR. When they think that it is a frivolous request, you need to send a letter immediately stating, “Hey, this is not a frivolous request and we do not expect your notice that you are going to ignore our request simply because I used verbiage. I found on the internet that verbiage doesn’t mean that I don’t have the right to dispute an item that is inaccurately reported on my credit report. I will pursue every legal means possible to get this inaccurate, outdated, unverifiable item out of my report. I am not afraid to take it to court and take it to the next level. You cannot ignore me since I have genuine claims”. When you send it right away, consumers should be programmed to send their responses immediately though the USD online portal. For the dispute customers, you will see how it is easy for them to upload the information as soon as they get it. If you are not a dispute customer, they should fax and call you until you know all the details before you go to the next step.

For the first question, we will talk on why they are showing on the 07 date. If they are showing the 07 as the last date of activity, and the date was settled in 2007, then it certainly makes sense. That is one of the reasons why settling debts is not always great for your credit reporting. We are not saying that you don’t pay you credit debts, but you always want consumer to pay their obligations and keep your obligation up to date. In reality, unless the collection agency is willing to delete the account, there is more harm than good done by paying the account. This is because if the account was from 03, they will only be a year away now from pupping of the report. On the other hand, now that they will settle it in 2007, that is going to be on the report in 2014 if all the sections of the item are reporting accurately and still verifiable. If the item is no longer verifiable, you can ask for a debt validation through the collection agency. The collection agency might not provide the debt validation. Therefore, if they are reporting information that they cannot verify or validate, the law states that they must remove it from the client’s credit report. In answering the next question, yes, the age of the account based on the recency of the derogatory period is the major factor in the scoring of the derogatory depending. It is obvious that a derogatory from the last month will affect the credit score more than the derogatory account from five years ago. Although “reaging” is a violation of the fair debt collection practices act, it is a common practice for collection agencies. If you are on a third letter already, sending a complaint to the attorney general or sending a complaint to a Federal Train Commission is a good idea. It is also a good idea continuing requesting a debt validation on the consumer by following up and letting them know that they violated the law. At that point, if the third force doesn’t assist you, you should team up with the local attorney and have the local attorney file a suit in the local court. For some jurisdictions, the attorneys can file to small claims court or at least help the consumer in filing the small claims court. It is not advisable for a credit repair company to help a consumer in doing any small claims actions, so that it can be looked at as unlicensed practice of law. Therefore, it is important for everyone in the industry to work with the attorney and develop relationships with them. You should not play as an attorney so that you don’t cross that debt ugly three letter acronym of UPL where you will be fined. It is always better that you pass it off to someone who knows, who is qualified, who is licensed to do that.

No, the Re-Start occurs 90 days after the last payment on the negative account. Therefore, 90 days after the late payment, it is typically charged off. It is exactly from the last time you made a payment and it was reported. However, to be safe, it is just 90 days, after the date the payment was made on the account.

For a business to grow, there are many ways to reach the affiliates. Out of the many methods, I usually prefer going out and teaching people in seminars as it will enable you to reach more people. In each instance when you go out, you can be able to reach between ten and fifty people. If at least 10% of the people agree to do business with you, then the meeting was successful. If you are excellent at presentation during the meetings, you can get more clients as they will understand your message. If you want people to attend your talks, you must know the topic well and have the presentation skills to keep the audience happy. Before you visit places for meetings, you should arrange for the title of the courses so that you can encourage continuous education. After creating a nice power point about a specific topic of the course, you should pass it to people that you visit in different places. There are many people who miss such small things; however, I will help you in how to educate your clients. First of all, you should ensure that the presentation is focused on the people and not selling what you do. At the end of the presentation, you can explain what you do and why you are different, but you should take less than five minutes in a 45-minute education. That is the best approach to get people interested in your business since it makes up a FICO Score. Another approach you can use is by inviting different professionals for lunch since providing lunch will motivate people to attend the meeting. This approach is used since you don’t know everyone in the market and there exist little ‘pockets’ in all markets. As you are marketing your affiliates, you should carry out self-promotion by having the portal markets for your affiliates. This ensures that your portal Dispute Suite members invest in your portal. Whenever the clients log in the portal, it will show the details of who referred them indicating the affiliate’s name, photo, logo and contact information. The will ensure that affiliates send new customers directly through your portal. You must realize that before you go out to meet new referral partners, you should send them an email or visit them physically, so that they put their logo in the outlook of your portal. You should also suggest to them to open their computers so that they see how the page looks like. In the page, they will see their own logo, photo and how you personalized them on your portal. This practice will be very persuasive to the client. For people who will try this practice, you must realize that the clients might not open the computer, so you must have a ready screen print-out of that page to show them how it looks like. Affiliates don’t care on the tactics you are using as they are concerned with the results. You must explain to the affiliates that together you will attract more clients. The affiliates don’t do anything with the denied files; they wait for you turn those files into cash. You can turn the files into deals and you must show them the benefits they will gain. When you are going to talk to affiliates, saying that you are the best credit repair company is not enough in this business. This is because many people who walk in always claim to be the best credit repair company. Before you visit the affiliates, you must think you can help them cultivate their business and develop your relationships. Some of the best approaches are to offer to do seminars for them and to offer to do education for their employees and customers. Whatever approach you take, it must be different from what others are doing. You must show them that you are going to constantly market back to them every time their customers log in through technology. These techniques have been proven and tested. As for me and my colleagues we have used them. All they are concerned about is how your cooperation with them will look like.

For a business to grow, there are many ways to reach the affiliates. Out of the many methods, I usually prefer going out and teaching people in seminars as it will enable you to reach more people. In each instance when you go out, you can be able to reach between ten and fifty people. If at least 10% of the people agree to do business with you, then the meeting was successful. If you are excellent at presentation during the meetings, you can get more clients as they will understand your message. If you want people to attend your talks, you must know the topic well and have the presentation skills to keep the audience happy. Before you visit places for meetings, you should arrange for the title of the courses so that you can encourage continuous education. After creating a nice power point about a specific topic of the course, you should pass it to people that you visit in different places. There are many people who miss such small things; however, I will help you in how to educate your clients. First of all, you should ensure that the presentation is focused on the people and not selling what you do. At the end of the presentation, you can explain what you do and why you are different, but you should take less than five minutes in a 45-minute education. That is the best approach to get people interested in your business since it makes up a FICO Score. Another approach you can use is by inviting different professionals for lunch since providing lunch will motivate people to attend the meeting. This approach is used since you don’t know everyone in the market and there exist little ‘pockets’ in all markets. As you are marketing your affiliates, you should carry out self-promotion by having the portal markets for your affiliates. This ensures that your portal Dispute Suite members invest in your portal. Whenever the clients log in the portal, it will show the details of who referred them indicating the affiliate’s name, photo, logo and contact information. The will ensure that affiliates send new customers directly through your portal. You must realize that before you go out to meet new referral partners, you should send them an email or visit them physically, so that they put their logo in the outlook of your portal. You should also suggest to them to open their computers so that they see how the page looks like. In the page, they will see their own logo, photo and how you personalized them on your portal. This practice will be very persuasive to the client. For people who will try this practice, you must realize that the clients might not open the computer, so you must have a ready screen print-out of that page to show them how it looks like. Affiliates don’t care on the tactics you are using as they are concerned with the results. You must explain to the affiliates that together you will attract more clients. The affiliates don’t do anything with the denied files; they wait for you turn those files into cash. You can turn the files into deals and you must show them the benefits they will gain. When you are going to talk to affiliates, saying that you are the best credit repair company is not enough in this business. This is because many people who walk in always claim to be the best credit repair company. Before you visit the affiliates, you must think you can help them cultivate their business and develop your relationships. Some of the best approaches are to offer to do seminars for them and to offer to do education for their employees and customers. Whatever approach you take, it must be different from what others are doing. You must show them that you are going to constantly market back to them every time their customers log in through technology. These techniques have been proven and tested. As for me and my colleagues we have used them. All they are concerned about is how your cooperation with them will look like.