On occasions when you do get approved, you will pay much higher interest rates or have to make a large down payment. This is the penalty the credit system imposes on people when they can not pay their debts.
This system does not recognize that catastrophic events occur. When someone is faced with the decision of feeding their family or making a payment, the choice is obvious.
Credit bureaus want you to think that when a charge off occurs you are stuck. That you will have to pay the penalties until the negative listing is naturally removed with time. This is false.
Fair Credit Reporting Act says that any unverifiable or inaccurate credit listing must be removed by the credit bureau. Typically lenders will not spend the money or time to verify an uncollectible debt.
So when investigations occur listings are usually removed despite the correctness of the listing. When we hear how hard it is to repair your credit it is in regards to getting the investigation started.
This happens because the credit bureaus only motive to conduct an investigation is to be compliant to the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The bureaus don't earn any extra money from conducting an investigation and instead spend money that would otherwise be profit.
Thus credit bureaus are very resistant to granting an investigation. They have a formula in place to discourage and frustrate an individual when they request an investigation. This is the common reason people will hire a professional credit repair firm.