Hi, Just wanted to inquire if anyone knows or have any experience with the services of the Lexington Law Firm that provides credit restoration services. I have a chargedoff account that is over 7 years old, it dropped off my credit report and I still would like to settle this account, so my record can be finally cleared. The amount is about $3,500.00-$4,000.00 for a personal loan- unsecured. I have visited their site numerous times, but I am still terrified that it will cost me more to settle and clear this. As per their advertisement they can settle 60% on the dollar. So that's about $1,800.00 - 2,400 and the charge of 20% of what is saved for their services. Any in which case it seems I still save . I am just terrified that things will not work out so well. My feet is still very wet when it comes to dealing with credit . So any advise any one can spare, I'd greatly appreciate it. Thank you.
You CAN do this yourself. Just call the creditor and tell them that even though it's been a long time since this happened, you'd like to make this right. Then make them an offer. It's past the Statute of limitations most likely, so they can't do anything(legally). They will be glad to get anything from you.
LKH is right. Credit Repair services leave a lot to be desired anyway even if you should decide not to take LKH's excellent advice for whatever reason. I always advise against using them for a variety of reasons. The first and to me the most important is that few if any of them will do anything about the debt itself. While they may or may not get the derogatory report off your credit history, they don't do anything to keep the creditor or his 3rd party collector from finally sueing you or otherwise hounding you to death. I think that if you are going to pay somebody to help you take care of your problems, they ought to take care of the whole problem for you, not just do some minor surface cosmetology and fool you into thinking they did you some good. As LKH points out, you can do that yourself for free. Even worse yet is their propensity to turn you into a liar by attempting to fool the credit bureaus into thinking that a lie is the truth and the truth is a lie. You can do that yourself for free too.
Not to pry or anything, but why would you want to clear your record when it's already fallen off of your report(s)? If it's at an institution that you currently do business with or plan on doing business with in the future, then it's understandable. But, other than spending money on an account they've probably erriditcated from their records, it doesn't make much sense. I have no experience w/ Lex's negotiation area, but I do know they have been praised for their "cleansing" work. Just my $0.02
Daveyboy: That's quite true. In fact, it's not all that easy to find people complaining about them. They seem to have a pretty good track record even though they do have a few people complaining that they accidently get good tradelines deleted along with the bad. There have also been stories about how customers have gotten letters from the postal service accusing them of trying to use the US Postal Service as part of an illegal remailing scheme. Or maybe that was Junum. That's because the credit repair companies don't want to let the customer see the tactics they use. They apparently consider that to be proprietary company information as though most anybody couldn't figure out for themselves that there are only so many possible things you can say while telling lies to a credit bureau. Don't take a rocket scientist to figure out what to say when making a dispute because the credit bureaus themselves tell everyone what they will and will not accept as excuses when disputing one's credit. That's why the government says that people shouldn't use credit repair companies because they can't do anything for them that they can't do themselves for free.
