With more and more people losing jobs and falling behind on their mortgage and other credit obligations, maintaining a good credit rating has become extremely difficult. What makes matters worse is that the scoring method imposed by the credit bureaus is punitive in nature and punishes a person for 7 to 10 years. Criminals receive lesser sentences than someone who has had the misfortune of losing their job or had a serious health issue. For those of you that have low credit scores and are in today's version of "debtor's prison" you can fight back.

HOW? is the question. Before you go into battle, you need to develop a strategy. The very first step is to find out exactly what is on your credit report. You are entitled to a free credit report one time per year. You can order one from each of the credit bureaus or you can sign up with a monitoring service where they will provide you with a credit report and report any changes that occur. Once you have your credit report you will have to go through each and every item that is being reported by your creditors. This is where most people have the most difficulty and start to question whether they should hire a professional credit repair company or try to do it themselves. There are pros and cons for both methods.

The biggest benefit for Do It Yourself Credit Repair is the savings. For the cost of paper, stamps and a little elbow grease, you can dispute the items that are reported incorrectly. While it is true that you can do for yourself what a credit repair company can do for you, and in some cases, you may actually do a better job of it. The problem is that most people do not know their legal rights. Congress enacted several consumer protection laws. The most widely recognized laws are the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act ("FDCPA") and the Fair Credit Reporting Act ("FCRA"). The other problem is what, and how to dispute and/or challenge the information provided by a creditor to the credit bureau. While it is easy to find the most obvious errors such as your name, date of birth or social security number, the mumbo, jumbo they use for the actual creditor information is archaic and very difficult to interpret or understand. In fact, one of the most widely abused practices used by creditors is misrepresenting the date of first delinquency. This is the date that is used to start your 7-year sentence and in many cases, this information doesn't even get reported or shown on your credit report. Creditors routinely report incorrect balances, account numbers and a multitude of other errors. Each negative item is then used to calculate your credit score so it is vitally important that the information be correct.

The biggest disadvantage to do it yourself credit repair is that the credit bureaus spend thousands of dollars each year discouraging individuals from using a credit repair company and encouraging them to dispute the items themselves. They even provide you with an online dispute process. The question you should be asking yourself is WHY? It's important to know that a credit bureau is a privately owned "for profit" corporation and their primary business is gathering information "for a fee" and selling that information "for a fee" to companies that are interested in extending credit to their customer. In other words, the credit bureaus' customer is your creditor or your potential creditor. The information they receive from their customer is what gets reported on your credit report. They apply the philosophy of the "customer is always right," and will always trust that this information is accurate if their customer says it is so. So the judge and jury has already ruled in favor of the creditor and if the proper procedures aren't followed during the dispute process you will be found guilty.

The biggest advantage to using a reputable credit repair company is that they know the laws and they know what to look for when looking at your credit report. They will use every legal method available to fight for your rights.

So which is better? Only you can answer that question. If Do It Yourself Credit Repair is the method you choose, I would recommend that before you make your decision, you should do some research of the consumer laws and learn as much as you can before sending off that first dispute letter.