A damaged credit score can make everything from financing a car to qualifying for an apartment more difficult, which makes an advertisement promising to “erase bad credit” understandably tempting. Unfortunately, some credit repair company promises go far beyond what anyone can legitimately guarantee. A company may be able to help identify inaccurate information and dispute legitimate errors, but it doesn’t have a secret backdoor into Equifax, Experian, or TransUnion that allows accurate negative history to magically disappear. In fact, federal law gives consumers many of the same dispute rights that paid credit repair services use on their behalf. Here’s a look at seven warning signs that the sales pitch may be considerably stronger than the service.
