*Loan,banking and credit>>>credit repair

Has anyone used a credit repair service?

Are those companies that promise to improve your FICO score by as much as 200 points really legit?

Credit repair services are a hoax. Avoid them.

Credit counseling services, however, aren't about your FICO, but about debt reduction. Some of these have a bad reputation, too, so only use them as a last resort and read all of the fine print.

The only way to improve your credit is to start rebuilding it over time. Get a low-fee secured credit card. Pay it off monthly, and let time heal your credit.

My wife and I went through Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Ventura County, California about 12 years ago. They didn't make any promises about improving our credit rating up-front, but they worked with our creditors to lower our monthly payments. Once we got all our unsecured credit paid off, they worked with the credit reporting agencies to raise our credit rating. Don't know if ours went up 200 points, but I can tell you that CCCS is legit and they really do help.
YOU are the best credit repair service.
Write down all your debt amounts and next to it write all the minimum payments. Take the amount (if you know how much you make every week) you have available to pay your bills and subtract all the minimum payment amounts. After you're done subtracting, all the money left over should be sent to your SMALLEST debt. Let's say your smallest debt is $300 and you pay a minimum of $40 per month. You have $120 extra to put towards your monthly bills. You will pay the small debt off in 2 months and then in the third month, you will have $160 extra since you no longer have to pay that $40 minimum. Then move on to the next smallest bill and so on and so forth.

Your credit score will increase as your debt will go down (lower credit debt ratio). The score will also rise as you have less creditors (bills). You DO NOT require to pay for services or counselling, it is something that can easily be done all by yourself. You just need a little time to write down what your bills are, the payment amounts, how much money you want to pay with and line up the bills. Services will do the exact same thing and charge you for it...and that money could be used to pay off your bills. Use it to pay off your bills, not thiers.

Also, any debt that is considered "relieved" or "forgiven" has the possibility of you having to pay taxes on it. Per the IRS, forgiven debts should be filed with a 1099-C which shows the forgiven debt as income (since you obtained items with the credit but never PAID for them, it is considered income). If you dodge filing the 1099-C but the company sends you one, you'll get nailed on an audit.
BSBA Finance, certified H&R Block Level 1 2005 Personal Income Tax, studying for Certified Financial Planner's license