Free Credit Repair Advice

Hopefully by now you’ve got a solid understanding of what is good and what is bad for your credit report, and how that impacts your credit score. It should be clear that old outstanding debt is particularly bad. It’s not an error, so you can’t simply dispute it. What’s the easiest and cheapest way to get rid of it?

The process is surprisingly simple. Start by looking at your most recent credit report (you can get a free report from annualcreditreport.com). At the end of the report, you’ll find the contact information for all your creditors. Send a letter to each creditor asking whether it has a record of the debt and how much you owe. Just state that you’re trying to check if the debt is valid, there’s no need to mention repayment or give away any other unnecessary information.

If you don’t hear back within 90 days, you can contact the credit agencies (Equifax, Experian and TransUnion) and ask them to remove that item from your credit report. You should attach a copy of the dated letter you sent to the creditor as proof that you have done your due diligence and that they did not stake any outstanding debt.

If you do get a response within 90 days, then you should reply with an offer to pay 40 cents for every dollar you owe. There might be some negotiations back-and-forth, and you’ll usually end up settling for 50 cents for every dollar.

If you have a large amount of old debt, a professional debt settlement company might be able to negotiate a better deal (30 cents for every dollar or even less). But that really depends on the amount you owe, and how old the debt is (the older, the less you’ll pay). Make sure you get competitive quotes from multiple certified companies. If you’d like to save time, try Debt-Disappear.com.

If you don't have time, or would like a professional to help you, we recommend Lexington Law.

	"Thanks! I was able to delete some collection items by using your free credit repair letters, and then hired a credit repair firm - Lexington Law - to do the tough work. They deleted the stubborn items like my big credit judgment." - Find out how Lexington Law helped Danny increase his credit score by 122 points!
	"I tried to remove the negative accounts myself but I didn't have much luck. I decided to get aggressive and hire a professional credit repair law firm. They started the credit repair process immediately and deleted three negative items within the first week!" - Find out how Lexington Law helped Sarah get a credit score of 707!