Questions people ask
Twenty answers, including the awkward ones.
Grouped roughly by what people are actually worried about. Nothing here is softened to make the service look better than it is.
The straight answers
Can you remove a collection that is genuinely mine?
No. If the information is accurate and the furnisher can verify it, nobody can lawfully have it removed. It falls off on its own, generally seven years from the date of first delinquency.
What we can do is make sure it is being reported correctly — the right balance, the right status, not duplicated across two agencies, and with the real first-delinquency date rather than a re-aged one. That last correction can take years off how long it lingers.
How many points will my score go up?
We will not answer that, and you should be wary of anybody who does. It is unlawful for a credit repair organisation to promise a specific result, and the honest reason is simpler: scoring models are proprietary and your file changes every month.
What we can tell you is which factors are weighing on your file, roughly what each is generally worth, and what the ceiling looks like once the accurate items age off.
How long does the whole thing take?
A report review is one session. A dispute runs on a statutory clock of about 30 days, and if there are several we stagger them rather than sending everything at once. So a file with three or four disputes usually takes three to four months end to end.
The rebuilding half does not really end; it just stops needing us. Most people move to occasional check-ins after six months or so.
Is credit repair a scam?
A lot of it is, and it is worth saying so plainly on our own website. The legitimate work — checking accuracy, disputing errors, demanding validation, coaching — is real and useful. The fringe that sells guaranteed deletions, advance fees and CPNs is not.
The test is simple and it has never failed us: if they want money before the work is done, or promise a result, walk away. Both are unlawful, and both are visible in the first five minutes.
Money
Do I pay anything to get started?
No. Not a deposit, not an enrolment fee, not a first month in advance, not a "file activation" charge. A credit repair organisation may not charge or accept payment until the promised services have been fully performed.
You also get a written contract before any work begins and three business days to cancel it without penalty or reason.
What does a typical file cost in total?
Somewhere between $250 and $500, spread over three or four months as each piece finishes. A file with nothing wrong on it costs nothing, because we will have told you that in the free conversation.
You get a written estimate of the total before signing, and it does not change without your agreement in writing. The full price list is here.
Do you take a monthly fee?
No. There is no subscription and no retainer. Work is quoted per piece and invoiced once that piece is done, so a month in which nothing needed doing costs nothing.
This is deliberate. The monthly model is what makes it profitable to keep somebody enrolled long after the useful work has finished.
What if I cannot pay an invoice this month?
Tell us and we will move the date. We have never charged a late fee and we have no mechanism for one, and nothing you owe us goes to a collection agency. It would be a peculiar business that put a collection on the credit report of a client who came here about a collection.
Reports and disputes
Will checking my credit lower my score?
No. Checking your own report is a soft inquiry. It is not visible to lenders and it has no effect on any score, however often you do it.
This is the most persistent myth in the field, and it is expensive: people avoid looking at their own file for years because of it.
Should I dispute online or by post?
Online is faster and gives you a reference number. Post, sent certified with return receipt, gives you proof of when the 30-day clock started, and lets you enclose documents that actually reach a human being rather than being reduced to a two-digit code.
For anything that matters, post it. And send the same package to the furnisher as well as the bureau — that habit is the difference between most disputes that work and most that do not.
What if the bureau says "verified" and it is still wrong?
Then there are more steps: a second dispute with new evidence, a hundred-word statement of dispute on the file, a complaint to the CFPB — which does get responses — and, in a serious case, a consumer attorney, because the FCRA carries a private right of action.
But if the item is genuinely accurate, "verified" is the end of the road, and an honest adviser tells you so instead of selling a second round.
Can an item that was deleted come back?
Yes, in one narrow circumstance: if it was deleted in error and the furnisher subsequently certifies it as accurate, it may be reinserted. You must be notified in writing within five business days if that happens.
If something reappears silently, that is a violation and it is worth raising.
Should I pay off a collection?
It depends, and anybody who answers this without seeing your file is guessing. Paying does not remove the entry, and under older scoring models it did not help the score at all. Newer models (FICO 9 and 10, VantageScore 3.0 and 4.0) ignore paid collections — but some lenders still use older ones.
Where it clearly helps: if a mortgage underwriter will require it, if the collector is likely to sue, or if the peace of mind is worth the money to you. Where it clearly does not: an item eighteen months from falling off, when the same money would do more sitting in an emergency fund.
Particular situations
I filed bankruptcy. Is there any point?
Yes, though not the point people expect. The bankruptcy itself cannot be removed — ten years from filing for a Chapter 7, seven for a Chapter 13 — but every account included in it should show a zero balance and a discharged status, and very often two or three do not. That is a straightforward, winnable dispute.
Rebuilding is also unusually effective after a discharge, which is why secured card offers start arriving within months. More on this here.
My divorce decree says the debt is my ex-spouse’s. Why is it still on my report?
Because a decree allocates responsibility between two people; it does not alter the contract with the lender. A joint account remains joint until it is closed, paid off, or refinanced into one name, and late payments continue to land on both files.
Your recourse when a former spouse stops paying is back in family court, not with the bank. It is worth acting early: get every joint account listed before the decree is final if you possibly can.
A hospital bill I already paid is showing as a collection.
That should not be there at all. Since July 2022 the three bureaus do not report paid medical collections in any circumstance, and since April 2023 they do not report unpaid ones under $500 either.
Get the itemised bill from the provider and the explanation of benefits from your insurer, put them side by side, and dispute with both the bureau and the collector. Longer note on this here.
A collector is threatening to sue me.
If you have been served with a lawsuit, you need a lawyer this week — not us, and not next month. An unanswered complaint becomes a default judgment, and a default judgment becomes a garnishment.
Legal Aid of Cleveland handles many consumer debt cases at no cost for people within their income guidelines, and the Ohio State Bar runs a referral line. Call us and we will sit with you while you make the call, at no charge.
Someone opened an account in my name.
Start at IdentityTheft.gov, which generates the FTC identity theft report you will need. Place a free fraud alert with one bureau (it must tell the other two), and consider a free credit freeze at all three, which is the stronger measure.
Then dispute the account as fraudulent with the bureaus and the furnisher, enclosing the report. This is one of the situations where the process genuinely works and works quickly.
About working with us
Do you need my Social Security number or a bank login?
Not to talk to you, and never a bank login of any kind. If we go on to work together we will need identifying information to request reports on your behalf, under a written limited authorisation that names exactly what we may discuss and that you can withdraw in a sentence.
Nobody will ever ask you for a password. If anybody claiming to be us does, it is not us.
Will you tell me to stop paying my creditors?
No, and if anybody tells you that, they are selling debt settlement whatever the letterhead says. Missing payments is how a settlement programme works, and it damages credit badly on the way through.
Is there any reason you would turn me away?
Several, and about one caller in four hears one of them. If your report is accurate there is nothing to dispute. If you are being sued you need a lawyer. If your obligations exceed your income by a wide margin, the honest answer is a non-profit counselling agency or a bankruptcy attorney.
None of those conversations costs anything, and we take no referral fee from anyone.
Can I just do it myself?
Yes, all of it, at no cost. Reports are free at annualcreditreport.com and disputes cost nothing to file.
We have written the whole method down, including the letters, and given it away. Most people who read that page never call, which is fine — it is not a lead magnet and there is nothing to fill in.
If your question is not here.
Ask it. There is no charge for a question, you do not have to become a client, and we will not put you on a list.
Not ready to talk to anyone? Take the guide and do it yourself. It is the same method, it costs nothing, and you never have to tell us you used it.