At Michigan Consumer Credit Lawyers, we often get asked whether “credit repair companies work” in Michigan. It’s a complicated question depending on who is doing the credit repair and what things you expect to be removed from your credit report. Let’s dig in.
For Credit Repair to be effective in Michigan, the letter must be written by a legitimate credit repair entity.
Credit repair companies write dispute letters for a monthly fee. Under the law, credit bureaus do not need to respond to these dispute letters that come from credit repair companies. They must, however, respond to dispute letters that come from lawyers. As lawyers, we legally represent our clients. Sometimes, we will get a response from a credit bureau asking for proof of our representation. We don’t send that proof; we merely sue them.
All three of major consumer credit bureaus, Experian, Equifax, and Trans Union have a department to screen the dispute letters that they receive. They each have an algorithm to detect whether the letter came from a credit repair company or from the consumer. Again, if they believe that the letter came from a credit repair company, they do not have to respond and frequently, they don’t.
Worse yet is when a credit repair company will dispute everything that is negative on consumer’s credit report. The chances of everything negative being inaccurate is infinitesimal unless the consumer is a victim of identity theft. When a credit bureau sees everything negative being disputed, it often ignores the letter as having come from a credit repair company.
Letters from lawyers usually have a recipient taking notice, including the credit bureaus. The letters we send are legitimate and comply with the law. Our letters identify inaccurate items on credit reports that need to be removed or updated. If bureaus refuse or fail to remove or update the tradelines that we identify as reporting inaccurately, we sue them.
In order for a dispute letter to a credit bureau to be effective in Michigan, it must specifically identify why the tradeline or collection item is reporting inaccurately.
Usually, this is what separates the legit from the illegitimate players. Credit repair companies will often dispute everything that is negative on a credit report with phrases such as “this is not mine” or “I paid this” or “I was never late.” None of these work unless the credit repair company attaches proof documents to the dispute letter. Remember, the credit bureaus have been sifting through dispute letters for many years. They know pretty quickly when a dispute letter is legit and when it’s not.
Our dispute letters are very simple. There is no magic in them beyond identifying the tradeline that is reporting inaccurately, specifically identifying the issue with the tradeline and attaching the proof documents to back up our position.
Conclusion
If you are trying to legitimately clean up your credit report from inaccurately reporting information, you should contact us at Michigan Consumer Credit Lawyers. We have been fixing credit reports since 2008. We are a real credit repair law firm. Visit us at www.micreditlawyer.com or call us at (248) 353-2882or email us at [email protected]. We are happy to look at your credit reports for free and give you our opinion as to how we can help.
Join our 3 for Free program and we will send out up to 3 dispute letters for you for free. You can also join our Auto Pilot program and we will pull your credit reports for free every two months to make sure that they stay free of inaccurately reporting information. Contact us today for your free, no obligation consult
