Credit repair is not a scam, but unfortunately many companies out there aren’t on the up and up!

When looking at a company to help you with your credit situation, make sure to do some research.

The Better Business Bureau is a good place to start, but know that there is no criteria for a positive BBB ranking for a credit repair company. Instead, you should focus more on the number of complaints rather than the “grade” a company has.

Another great tool is to ask someone you trust whether they have used a specific company and had good results.

Naturally, you want to call up a couple places and make sure that you feel comfortable with what they are offering and how their sign up process works.

Most companies are very pushy during the enrollment process and are more concerned about getting your money than really helping you. The conversation should be centered on you and your issues, not on how much you need to pay and how quickly you can get started.

Make sure the company is registered and bonded with the state where it operates.

Finally, ask for a copy of their client agreement and look at their guarantee. If they are promising certain scores or a specific number of deletions know that those claims are against industry regulations.

Make sure the guarantee allows you to get your money back if the results do not equal the service provided, and that it is not voided for silly reasons, like not sending in bureau responses or having your credit pulled.

The short answer: It depends.

The time it takes depends almost entirely on the overall make up of your credit report. Our average client is enrolled in our program for between 4-6 months, but each person is different.

For example, if you have a 580 credit score with a number of good open accounts, you might only be in our program for 3 months before your scores are at a 640 enabling you to purchase a home.

On the other hand, if your score is a 500, but you do not have any open accounts, you may need 6 months or more to get up to where you need to be. This is why you need to be careful when dealing with companies that lock you in for a pre-determined length of time, as everyone’s results are different.

Your service may take 4 months, but your best friend might take 6, and his girlfriend might only need 2. This is why we do not force you to remain in our program for a specific length of time.

Our service is specifically designed to allow clients to only receive the amount of help that they need. We discovered long ago that everyone’s credit report responds in a unique way, so to set everyone up on the exact same length of time for service makes no sense.

We can estimate how long it will take to complete your service, but that is simply an educated guess based upon past results with other clients. That being the case, we decided to simply set up our program so that you only remain in the service as long as you need us and are seeing results. Whenever you are ready to move on just let us know.

First and foremost, it would be entirely unethical and immoral to just "drag our feet" and keep you in the program longer just to collect more money. We realize, however, that you have no reason to believe that statement, so let’s put it another way.

If we take our sweet time and keep you in our program for 12 months, you are not going to be very happy with us, and chances are, you are not going to refer anyone over to us.

However, if we can get you in and out in a much shorter time, you will be more excited about what we did and you will, hopefully, tell your friends and family members about how great we are, which will more than make up for the money we "lost" by not taking longer.

Also, consider what would happen if you were referred by a mortgage professional and we took too long. Not only would you be upset, but your mortgage guy would as well, and he definitely would not use us in the future.

So, the first reason is moral and ethical, but it’s also good business practice to do everything we can as quickly and efficiently as possible. When our clients are happy, we benefit as well.

We work on any negative item that is reporting on your credit history, including, but not limited to: bankruptcies, collections, charge offs, late payments, foreclosures, repossessions, tax liens, and judgments.

One item we will not work with is child support. As a company policy, we will only dispute late payments on a child support account if you can provide information that it is legitimately incorrect. We are not in the business of helping people skirt their legal, moral, ethical, and parental duties and obligations.

While we cannot guarantee any specific results, we can tell you that we have been very successful removing both Chapter 7 and 13 bankruptcies in the past. Disputing a bankruptcy is not any more difficult than disputing any other negative item on your report.

In our experience, we have never seen an item reappear after it was deleted. Now, this is assuming that the item was deleted properly and legally through the Fair Credit Reporting Act – which we do.

We have seen and heard of other companies that simply file a fraud alert or some other questionable objection that requires the item to be removed pending an investigation, but after that is completed, the item comes back on. We refuse to engage in those types of activities, and instead contain our processes to those legally sanctioned under the FCRA.

Yes. Simply because an item is yours does not necessarily mean it should be on your credit report, or that it should remain on there.

You have the right to dispute and question any item on your report, and that shifts the burden to the reporting company to verify that the item is, in fact, accurate and reporting properly.

If they cannot, or do not, respond in a timely manner, even if the item is actually yours, it must be deleted. It is important to remember that just because an item is reporting on your credit history does not mean you necessarily owe that money. At the same time, simply because an item is deleted does not always mean you do not owe it.

No. Not only is this against industry regulations, but it is almost completely and entirely a guess, at best.

Everyone’s credit is different and reacts in different ways to the dispute process. Even if you have a letter from a creditor stating the account should not be reporting on your credit history that does not necessarily mean the bureaus will delete that item. With so many factors involved, we think it is much more appropriate to guarantee that if we are not successful in deleting items you are entitled to some, if not all, of your money back.

Remember, if a creditor responds promptly with the appropriate information verifying a negative account, it can, and probably will, remain on your report for up to 7 years.

You most certainly can! That is part of what makes The Credit Coach unique in the credit repair industry.  As you look through our website, you will see that we are dedicated to equipping you with the education, knowledge, and tools necessary to successfully dispute and repair derogatory items on your credit report.

We want to empower consumers to take charge of their own credit and handle the process by themselves. That being said, we are not only here to coach and support, but our dedicated credit specialists are also standing by to take over, at any point, if you decide that you would like us to handle the process for you.

We realize that many people would love to do this by themselves, but the time, effort, and dedication required is sometimes more than they can spare. Our goal is to give you the support you need.

This is one of the most common questions we are asked. Unfortunately, doing the "right" thing does not always translate into a positive response on your credit report.

When you pay off a collection, not only does it cost you hundreds (or maybe thousands) of dollars, but it almost never results in that account being deleted from your credit report.

Most of the time, the account is updated to a $0 balance, which is a good thing, but the company will also update the date of last activity. So, instead of the item having a balance and being a few years old, it no longer has a balance, but is considered a "new" account, which typically drops your score.

Yes, you read that correctly, most of the time when you pay off older collections it will drop your score and reset the 7 year time limit that an account can remain on your credit report.

We want to be clear that we are not saying to never pay off collections, but we prefer if you check with us or your mortgage professional before doing so, as we can probably save you a lot of money and prevent a lot of harm to your report.

You can either get a credit report from a mortgage professional or through any number of online sources. We are more than happy to recommend a few sites for you to try if you are interested.

We are unable to pull a credit report for you, because we are not a lender, and that is against industry regulations.

We understand many companies out there will provide you with a report when you enroll in their program, but we have decided to follow the laws governing this industry rather than attempting to skirt around them.

As such, you will need to either provide us with a report from a mortgage professional or go online and pull one for yourself. There are a number of good sites out there and we are more than happy to give you the information necessary to get this done. Yes, it’s an extra step on your side, but it assures that we are compliant in all that we do.

Starting our program is easy and you can get set up in a few different ways. First, since you are already on our website, you can simply click on the "Get Started" button at the top of every page.

Second, you can call our enrollment department at 214-603-8858 and sign up over the phone.

Third, you can have our enrollment department email, fax, or mail you a copy of our client agreement which you can then fill out and either email, fax, or mail back to us.

The only real difference between the various ways to get started is how quickly you want to get the process moving forward.

We most certainly can and, in fact, we’ve help clients from all 50 states. Our service complies with the rules and regulations in each state, enabling us to offer our program to people no matter where they live.

No. Sadly, that is one of those "tricks of the trade" that many companies use to increase the amount of money you will have to pay to get enrolled in their program.

Whether you only have a few items on your report or if you have many, our price is the same. We are not in the business of charging more because you require more help, our pricing is the same for everyone.

We provide all of our clients (who have an email address) a private client website where they can securely log in and track their results.

The credit bureaus will respond directly to you, not to us, so you will always have a good idea of where things stand by looking over those responses.

If you send those credit bureau responses in to us, we can update your client portal to make it much easier to follow and understand the results you have achieved.

We also encourage our clients to enroll in an online monitoring site, as that way you will always know exactly where your scores are and the complete results of what we are doing. Also, we oftentimes receive updated reports from mortgage professionals along the way to help us determine where we are, what we have accomplished, and what is left for us to do.

Thank you! We would love for you to refer someone over to us, and, if you are a client, we will give a credit to your account if they enroll.

The majority of our clients are referred to us through a mortgage professional, friend, or family member. We believe wholeheartedly that this is the best way to conduct business.

The best way to refer someone is not to simply give them our information, as they probably will not contact us, but instead, pass their information to your dedicated credit specialist, who will reach out to them.

This way we can also make sure you receive the proper credit when they enroll.

We are more than happy to refer you to any one of the amazing mortgage folks we know.

In fact, we would like to be your source for just about any service you are looking for. We have a list of Trusted Partners on this site who our clients have used and given favorable reviews of the services provided.

We trust each of them and many even offer discounts to our clients. If you do not find what you are looking for, just give us a call and we will be more than happy to see if we know of someone to help your specific situation.

No, you are able to enroll in our program online, over the phone, or via email, fax, or regular mail. Getting started only takes a few minutes.

Unfortunately, the only way to sign up with our program online is with a credit or debit card. If you do not have a credit or debit card available, however, you are also able to enroll with a check by phone, or through the mail with a regular check or money order. We want to make it as easy as possible for you to get started.

This is another situation we encounter quite often. You can only have one set of disputes going at a time, so it would be a waste of time and money to work with two companies.

The only situation in which this would not be the case is if one company was only working on certain items and the other company was working on others.

Now, that being said, this is still a ridiculous waste of your money as one company can, and should, be working on your entire file. If you are with another company and not satisfied, then you should stop that service and wait a few months before starting with us (or another company, for that matter).

You see, credit repair is not something you can do indefinitely as, at some point, the bureaus will have investigated to such an extent that they will consider further dispute attempts to be "frivolous" and will stop the process.

This happens at different times for each person, so there is no way to predict when it will occur, but it typically happens between 9-12 months. As such, it is rarely a good idea to jump directly from one company to another.

If you’re unsure how to proceed, give us a call and we’ll guide you on the timing of things.

Absolutely not! Your information is stored on secure servers and will never be used for anything other that helping you repair your credit.