A credit repair service is a company that specializes in cleaning up your credit history with the goal of raising your credit score in a short period of time. Before you use a credit repair service, there are a number of things you should know about the legalities of such services in order to protect yourself from federal crimes.

The idea of credit repair is a good one, and for companies that are able to raise your credit score, there are many benefits of using such a service. Bad credit that comes from errors and inaccurate information on your credit report needs to be fixed – and the result should be a higher credit score. For example, if you went through a bankruptcy but the individual accounts are still showing past due on your credit report, they need to be erased.

When someone has poor credit, it's typically because they haven't made their payments on time, or skipped them altogether, or a loan has been moved into collections for non payment. Using a credit repair service to remove accurate negative notations from your credit report is illegal, and punishable with fines and even jail time.

Credit repair services are only useful if you have items on your credit report that are inaccurate, or even a result of identity theft. While you can contact the creditors who reported the information in error yourself, it's time consuming and frustrating. In these situations, credit repair services are helpful to remove inaccuracies and save you time and frustration.

To repair your credit history, you first need to request a credit report to see which information is incorrect, and then work with creditors to get that inaccurate information removed.

You can write your own letters to each individual creditor as needed to have bad credit items removed. Also, while it is illegal to try to remove a credit item from your report that is the result of actual late payments you have made, you can work with the creditor for a settlement that would result in an update to your credit report showing that the debt is settled. That is all of the steps necessary in the credit repair process.

When you contact a credit repair service, you will know if they are reputable if they ask you whether or not the information on your credit report that's causing the lower credit score is accurate or reported in error. If they don't seem to care whether your credit report is accurate, you can be sure they're not a reputable service.

Remember these things when using a credit repair service:

Only inaccurate credit information can legally be removed. Any company that makes guarantees for performing credit repairs on anything causing a lower credit score is not reputable and should be avoided.

When you use a credit repair service, you'll pay high prices for the services that you could perform on your own. They are simply saving you time and frustration but it's up to you to decide whether that's worth the fee to you or not.

If you keep this in mind, you can successfully have your credit repaired and your score raised so that you can begin to take advantage of lower interest rates and other charges again.