Need your advice on credit repair

Hi, I am new here. Forgive me if I am posting some frequent questions... and sorry for the long post.

I have been wanting to repair our credit for years now. I have stopped in this group from time to time and read a few posts. I've studied the whole credit repair process in detail on many different web sites. I fully understand how and what to do. At one point I began to do my own credit repair but I came to the conclusion that I would be better off hiring a firm to do it for me.

The reasons I decided not to do it myself was

1) my credit report is very long (11 pages on one credit report, 12 pages on another and 5 on the last). Disputing all of the negative listings required more time than I wanted to commit.
2) I have more money than I do time so hiring someone who is an expert to do it for me while I continue to make money at what I am an expert at seemed to be a logical choice.

3) I felt that even with all I had learned online that I would still not be as skilled at knowing what to do or what to say in a letter as a firm would be.

So for these reasons I decided to have someone else do it for me. I know a lot of people here are very pro do-it-yourself. And I would if there were only 5 or 10 items to dispute. But there's much more than that. It just seems like too much work.

Some more background; last October when we purchased a house my scores were as follows;
Beacon; 521 Imperica; 528 Fair Isaak; 566
my wife's were better;
601, 625 and 594 respectively.

When we purchased a car recently I know my wife's Beaceon was up to about 625. I am sure this is because we settled all of her old debts when we bought the house and because of the new, positive mortgage history.

Also, over the last 2 years I have opened about 5 Visa or Mastercard accounts. Only one was secured but is not any longer. I have kept these all up to date. In the mean time, old negative accounts are falling off. So I am sure my credit rating has improved but probably no too much.
Given all of this info I ask the following questions;

1) should I go with a local credit repair agency (there are 2 or 3 reputable ones in our city) or a national one? I already know I don't like Lexington. I have dealt with them in the past (breifly) and I didn't like them at that time. And what I read here about them doesn't make me like them any more. But maybe someone here has had better results with another company ???

I was thinking a local firm would be better because I could keep tabs on them and also if there were any papers to sign I could just go in and sign them. No mail delays.

2) Am I dreaming to think that I could see some pretty major results inside 6-12 months? What can I do to speed up the process?

3) I am inclined to think that firms that charge by-the-deletion as opposed to monthly rates are better. They have an incentive to act faster while the monthly rate places seem to have an incentive to delay things. Is that fairly accurate?

Thanks for any help you can give. I'd give or pay almost anything to have both of us in the 700 club in 1 year.

 

Re: Need your advice on credit repa

I am definitely going to check into their history with the BBB and get 4-5 local referrals.

As for why I never did it myself, I guess I just wasn't sure about where to start. I didn't know if I should dispute all of the negatives at once or just do a few at a time. I could see them calling my letter frivelous if I just blatently disputed everything negative and didn't dispute any other info.

Then I read on creditnet that it is best to write your letter by hand, because it makes it look more like you did it as opposed to some agency. So I began writing out my letter by hand and it was taking hours to do.

Then I didn't know exactly what reasons to give for my disputes. Technically, they are all pretty accurate. So basically I have to lie to dispute them. What do I say on so many disputes. It seemed goofy to just go through and say, "This one isn't mine.....I was never late on this one.....I don't know who this company is... etc."

That's when I got frustrated and just decided I could hire out for it.

The company I am looking at claims to have 30 yrs experience doing it and is bonded, insured, etc. Also, as I mentioned, I plan to keep very good tabs on them since I am close.