If you find yourself struggling with increasing your credit score, you might look to credit repair companies to help you out. Essentially, you pay one of these repair companies a fee and they help to remove any negative information from your credit report and restore it with positive information and positive seasoned tradelines, leaving you with a better credit score than before.

As you know, with all great things come the bad. There are many deceptive companies out there that scam consumers, especially those who are desperate to increase their credit score. If you want to utilize one of these credit repair companies, yet aren’t sure if you’re being scammed or not, here are some of the top signs of a credit repair scam:

They Don’t Provide You With a “Consumer Credit File Rights Under State and Federal Law” Document

This document has a number of rights applied by the federal government that allow you to obtain your credit report and dispute credit report errors. If you are working with a legitimate credit repair company, they are legally obligated to let you know that you are able to execute any of these services without them.

They Don’t Provide You With a Contract Copy

You should be able to view any contract before you sign it. That’s just common sense. Never agree to pay for any fees or services before you have read a contract and know exactly what you are signing up for. Make sure to read through your contract so that you can digest all of the necessary information.

The Contract Is Missing Important Information

A contract with a credit repair company should include a number of important details. For starters, it should have the exact number in dollars and cents that you are being charged for the service, as well as any and all details that pertain to the specific service.

The contract should also list the time and date that those services will be performed, information about the business including the name and address, and a cancellation sub-contract.

They Ask For a Pre Payment

No credit repair company should ever ask for upfront fees before they perform the necessary services. This is the law. Unfortunately, even legitimate credit repair companies will do this a lot of the time, as they don’t know that it’s the law. In our experience, don’t ever go with a company that charges upfront, even if everything else checks out.

They Promise To Remove Accurate Credit Information

A company cannot remove information on your credit report that has been reported accurately. This type of information should be on your credit report legally. Illegitimate companies will make promises to remove this information or ask you to do unlawful things, such as claiming identity theft for information removal.

Conclusion

We hope that this article has given you some necessary information to stay far away from credit repair scammers. Once you have successfully