Junum-Bradley Ross-Lexington

I used Junum, not very good. They just send in the dispute form that comes with your report. You could actually save time by cutting their process out. Plus would be cheaper. They erased some of my good accounts. Hope this helps.

 

There is no substitute for spending time here and on a few other boards such as this doing research, learning how the process works and drawing from the experience of those that have been successful in their credit repair hobby.

The only true value to Junum, Lexington, Bradley Ross and others is that they spend the time doing what you are fully capable of doing yourself. If your time is severely limited and you can't spend 1 hour 2-3 times a week working on the effort then one of those services are worth your time. Most find that the challenge of "tilting with the dragon" (CRA and creditors) is an enjoyable one and a lot of eye opening information is learned, which helps you deal with corporate america when it comes to credit in the future.
Most of us also find we are full of advice when we overhear a friend complaining about "that darned collection agency calling" LOL!

Be cautious as most of these companies will dispute anything THEY interpet as negative, sometimes an account that is current, has one late reported 2 years ago will be disputed and sometimes removed.

At the very least Lexington has improved this recently, likely due to feedback from their clients about this scenario happening. Lexington will clearly tell you up front that you can do this yourself. If you sign up they will tell you that unless you "highlight" the items you want disputed they will dispute everything they consider a negative. What many have done here is highlighting the accounts they want disputed and blacking out all positive accounts when they use Lexington. Lexington also recently began a service called "on demand" in which they dispute (I suppose with validation) with the creditor or cra reporting.

As with anything those that have used any of these services have reported as much success as disappointment.

The key to doing this on your own is researching and educating yourself on the FCRA, FDCPA, various sample letters, successes of others etc. and the most important qualities you must have to be successful are PATIENCE and PERSISTENCE. Although one late payment can damage your credit with a single report overnight, it takes months and months to get some negatives changed or removed.

 

Hal,

An update on Lexington: every Lexington client is asked to complete the "Dispute Valet" questionaire which gives the client total control over which items are to be disputed and even HOW Lexington will be disputing them (whether they're to be disputed as inaccurate, unverifiable or misleading.)

It is the ultimate assurance that the firm won't challenge items that the client doesn't want challenged (which hasn't ever been a Lexington problem that I can recall via this board or otherwise.)

 

Jayson,

I have used Dispute Valet, and I do appreciate the improvement. I have seen posts, not necessarily on this board that Lexington members have indicated items they did not want disputed were disputed and removed, although I don't have exact recall if they were positive accounts removed.

Overall, I have no complaints with Lexington, I think from what I have seen so far (still on my first round) it is providing a good service. The website is improved and I have had nothing but timely, excellent responses from Lexington to my questions or concerns. I cannot say the same for my experience with Junum.

I appreciated most, that they didn't purport to have any "secrets" that would allow them to do something a potential client could not do on their own, and were very clear that the service they were offering could be performed by the client.

 

I just cancelled Lexington. They had two positive items removed! They were successful in getting a BK7 off of one credit file, but it will come off in August anyway.
In the three months they worked on my husbands file they only had three items removed, like I said before, two of them were positive items.
I also started receiving, just about every week, letters from the CRA's stating they knew he was working with a credit repair company and were going to label items as frivolous unless reasons were given other than "not mine", "inaccurate". They said they required more than that, and that they wouldn't investigate disputes for a third party without a power of attorney.
I figured I have gotten more accomplished on my own.