CREDIT REPAIR Services SCAMS
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Advance fee credit repair
services are illegal, and for a good reason. This is how an
advance fee credit repair services scam works. Scam artists
posing as legitimate businesses or even credit repair law firms promise
you to erase bad credit and that you are guaranteed, or almost-guaranteed, to get
your credit score raised, but you have to pay them or some
third party a “processing fee” in advance. The advance fee
can be any amount but $100 to $300 seems to be the most
common amount for scam agency credit repair.. |
You may be required to
answer credit related questions over the telephone, or even
fill out a standard looking credit application. Maybe they
will offer credit card consolidation too. The scammer
on the other end of the telephone will be friendly and sound
like he knows everything about credit repairs. Everything looks
legit and unless you took the time to do a complete
background check you would never know that you were being
set up in a fix your credit scam.
Many advance fee credit
repair agencies have moved out of the US to set up shop in
Canada. They advertise bad credit repair, cheap loans, bad
credit loans, debt management, unsecured loans or an easy
bad credit mortgage in the classified section
of daily newspapers and in magazines. These ads often
feature toll-free 800, 866, or 877 numbers, or area codes
from Canada, such as 416, 647, 905, or 705. If you think
about it for a minute, why would a legitimate Canadian
lender offer to repair your credit or be more likely to make high risk loans than a US
lender when the cost of collection will be higher?
Direct mail, radio, and
cable TV spots are other favorite advertisers. The
newspaper, radio or TV station does not have any more
information about this supposed credit repair service than you do. They will not find out for some
time that the ads are fraudulent. You cannot rely on them
to screen their advertisers or do background checks before
placing their company credit repair ads.
If you do get involved in
a repair my credit scam and do not catch on until late in
the conversation here is the tip that almost guarantees the person
on the other end of the phone is a crook – he will ask
you to pay the advance fee by Western Union money transfer.
The more brazen scammers will give you a personal name and not a company
name to pay, or will ask you to use a password code which
allows him to hide his identify. |
