#1 Consumer Suggestion
AUTHOR: bella09 - (United States of America)
SUBMITTED: Thursday, May 19, 2011
POSTED: Thursday, May 19, 2011
Lexington Law Firm was an absolute Godsend for me. I like many others had negative items listed on my credit report, however accounts had been sold, paid, transferred, closed, etc. So in that case many accounts were listed as multiples which in turn lowers my credit score and incorrectly. It makes it look like you have several accounts because each company documents the account of yours that they once had, even if they don't own the account anymore. There's also the issue of negative accounts that have been on my credit for their fair share of time and were overstaying their welcome. Accounts in negative standing on your credit report will often show the date they started reporting to credit bureaus as well as the date they plan to remove the account from your credit report. However, it's not their first priority to remove a delinquent account when they've received nothing of monetary value from you as the consumer.
Now what is required if you were to take care of this yourself without any outside assistance is to write a formal letter to each company, often citing different laws that fall under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. These laws state that if they no longer own the account, they must delete it from your credit report completely, if they have owned the account for a certain period of time (usually 5-7 years) and have reported this negative information for the legal amount of time allowed, they must now delete the account from your credit report. You as the consumer can file online disputes, write a letter or attempt to reach these companies by phone to resolve the issue, but it comes down to this- when they receive any type of correspondence from a law firm, they know they're dealing with someone who knows the laws surrounding credit reporting and they must act accordingly. Unfortunately for us as consumers, they don't always act like that when dealing with us directly as they should because they've gotten used to getting away with it. Don't get me wrong, many companies have been under tremendous scrutiny for their unethical business practices, downright harassing and threatening consumers and these consumers were smart enough to record these conversations. So as I've stated, they act on their best behavior and do as they should when contacted by any attorney or law firm in general. Also, the amount of time that goes into doing everything yourself is incredible. For me, it was well worth paying for their services every month as they were doing what I paid them to do.
Their program is setup online, but you may also call to speak to someone any day of the week and believe me I did and took full advantage of their services. You go online and request all three copies of credit reports from Trans Union, Experian an Equifax, these credit reports will then load into your profile. At that point you can select from several options for disputing negative information on your credit report, some of those options include- your identity was stolen and the account was opened without your knowledge, the account just does not belong to you and there is someone with the same name, the have reported an incorrect balance on your account, they have mistakenly reported that you've made late payments when in fact they were on time and you have documentation to prove that, they're still reporting negative account information and you've satisfied the balance in full, the account was paid in settlement but they are still reporting a balance owed or no payments made, the account was paid off with the agreement (in writing, always get it in writing) that they would delete the account from your credit report once paid in full or for whatever the agreed upon amount was. You select from those options and they send off the appropriate letter to the company disputing the negative information in your credit report. These companies can respond in several different ways, but you will receive whatever changes they made in the mail. It will be in the form of a partially updated credit report from a particular credit bureau. It could say that the information was confirmed and will stay the same, the account has been deleted from your report, the account has been updated with correct information, etc.
It is crucial that consumers looking into receiving this service understand that it is then your responsibility to take this updated account on your credit report and make a copy of it then mail it to Lexington Law, scan it to your computer and email it to Lexington Law or they may have a fax option now. Lexington Law will not receive any information from the credit bureaus about your credit, they are not the consumer or credit holder. They may be your attorney, but legally this information has to go directly to you. It is then your responsibility to send this information to them so they may update your profile to show which accounts have been taken care of and which ones you're still working on.
It is also important to understand that once inquiries have been sent to these companies, it usually takes them about 30-45 days to even respond to it. Once they respond, they then have up to 45 days to correct or update this information on your credit report. Nothing happens overnight. If you dispute several accounts at once, it gets the ball rolling, but if you sit around and maybe dispute one a month or something like that then it will take a very long time to get anything done and you will be wasting your own money paying for Lexington Law's services every month. When I used their services, there was a limit as to how many accounts on my credit they would work on at any given time. When I used their services I believe it was 4 accounts at any given time, however it may be different now. So for this reason, it is crucial that you forward any information you get from the credit bureaus right away so they can take that account off the list and you can move on to the next account you would like to dispute.
When I started using their services, I opened an account for myself and my husband. It was $200 for the initial fee and $60 per month for each of us, so total of $120 total monthly for their services. You have to be proactive and it's so easy to utilize their services to your advantage to improve your credit drastically. You take a few hours on your weekend, log onto your profile and go through and find duplicate accounts for the same original account, dispute the oldest ones so that your credit report only reflects one open account. You look for any incorrect information, you contact the companies that have accurate balances and try to come to an agreement to get it paid off and removed from your credit. Any company that won't agree to remove their account from my credit once it's been paid, I've just not paid. There's no reason why they shouldn't remove it, it's a simple process for them to put in the request to remove from credit reporting. What you can't do is expect to pay Lexington Law every month and have them do absolutely everything for you, they don't know you personally, they don't know what's accurate and what's not. You have to put the time and effort in and let them know what you need done and they'll work on getting it done. Within the first 4 months of using their services I had about 6 accounts removed from my credit report and my credit score went up over 100 points and continued to rise. You can't expect them to just "fix" your credit. There is a process and if you were to have a local law firm on retainer to do this for you, you would wind up being billed hourly for their work, for each piece of correspondence that went out, for each phone call you had with them, etc. With this service, they're charging an affordable monthly rate for an invaluable service. When it comes to your credit, it's just so much easier for it to be good. I usually called their customer service department 3-4 times a week and would get the same 4 or 5 people and they were always friendly. They would confirm the documents that I sent were received, they would let me know what accounts they were currently working on, when correspondence was sent out and would answer any questions I had to the best of their ability. Maybe they were nice to me because they saw how hard I was working with them to improve my credit, maybe they thought hey, she's really trying to take care of everything here, even pay off the accurate ones and then let us work on getting it removed so they were more prone to assist with what they could. It was all around a great experience and when they had done everything that they could for me, which in my case was removing duplicate accounts, deleting old information and paid accounts, updating payment information, etc. then I was done using their service and canceled my plan with them. They never took out money when they weren't supposed to or more than they were supposed to, they always charged my bank account at the same time every month, they were all around a very professional company with excellent customer service.
This could be a great tool for anyone to use, but you must be involved. You should have a good understanding of the process and they are more than happy to explain it to you. I already knew how it worked, but knew it was too much for me to take care of while working full time. So to me it was definitely well worth paying $60 a month for almost a year to get my credit cleaned up. I would recommend them to anyone who was serious about improving their credit and planned on having the time to take care of responsibilities on their end and was ultimately motivated to get it all done knowing the end result was peace of mind.
I hope this helps any of you who are looking to improve your credit and are looking for a company to help with this. I also hope that it helps those of you who think you were ripped off by their services because you paid for services and they did nothing...well did you do what you were supposed to do which was direct them, tell them which accounts to work on and why you were disputing it? If you never did any of this, then yes you paid for nothing because you didn't understand what you were getting into and maybe didn't care to figure it out. There may be some companies out there that claim to "fix" your credit overnight, but please be aware that's probably a scam. This is the legitimate, legal process for improving your credit. There is no "easy" way, you will have to put time in and send documents and make phone calls. Sorry, but there is no way around that. Again, I hope this helps everyone make a more informed decision about using this service. I hope it helps those of you who claimed to be ripped off by this company to understand what went wrong and how you could change that in the future. Always understand what you are getting into before agreeing to it, understand the other end of the agreement (what services you will receive), and fully understand what you need to do to get the best service, especially before giving your consent for an ACH debit to your checking account every month when you're strapped as it is and that may risk being able to put food on the table for your children. Please own up to your mistakes and don't place blame on others for your lack of comprehension. I guess that seems to be the way this country is going these days...
