Credit Repair Scams: The economy isn’t in the best of shapes and hasn’t been for a couple of years now and many of us who have never had to deal with debt previously are now doing so, and many of us for the first time.
The first step anyone should take is to find out the actual status of their credit and to do this they will need a copy of their credit report from each of the three credit bureaus; Experian, Equifax and TransUnion.
Can you get free credit reports?
Not everyone is aware of this but every single US citizen is entitled to a free credit report from each of the three bureaus every 12 months, the reason many people are not aware of this is that the government and consumer councils will not spend money to advertise this fact.
Credit Report Scams: Unfortunately, this is why many companies will try to take advantage of this lack of public awareness. You may well have seen or heard advertisements on everything from local radio to the internet about how you can receive free credit reports; but just because these ads repetitively mention that the credit reports are free it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are!
In a large number of cases, once these companies are approached, they will ask you to make some kind of purchase or sign up to a third party credit repair or monitoring service before they will release your free credit reports.