About Jeff Parker
Like most people with bad credit, I felt like it was impossible to get out from under the bad debt I accumulated. Let’s face it, getting behind doesn’t make you a bad person. It doesn’t seem that when good people start slipping, there is a way to avoid sinking in quicksand.
Middle and lower class America really get the crap beat out of them. Corporate America makes it seem impossible to repair your credit.
Even though there are Federal Laws and remedies available, the big companies know it is difficult for a regular consumer to apply any of these remedies because it is so expensive to hire an attorney to help you.
I tried to get a lawyer locally to help me but no one would take help me.
I screwed up my credit by leaving my waiter job to start a job in sales. Well it turned out I sucked. I wasn’t making any money and had to live off my credit, which eventually ran out. I took a chance to make my life better and didn’t get there fast enough; and I started drowning. Sound familiar?
I started getting letters and calls that we all are familiar with. I had no choice but to ignore them as I didn’t know what to do and had no help.
I tried by sending certified letters myself to the creditors. I spent a few hundred dollars on the form letter I downloaded for free from the internet. I had free advice from credit repair websites and blogs advising to simply send letters out to offer to settle with the creditors. I did not settle one account. Pay in full or they told me I would never own a home a car or obtain credit ever again. Sound familiar?
Fortunately I didn’t subscribe to a company that I had to pay an upfront fee to.
I won a small settlement in 2008 and asked my attorney to settle my accounts for me. I instructed my lawyer to run my credit and settle the accounts.
He didn’t have much luck, only being able to settle one case for $85 and having a few duplicates removed.
It cost me in excess of $2,000 in Attorney fees for him to write letters and try to negotiate settlements.
During all this I had an account pop up on my credit report for $85. I instructed my attorney to call to pay them the $85 they were looking for if they removed the account from my report. He told me the representative he spoke to would not speak to him even though he identified himself as my attorney. The representative of this company would not take the payment. They claimed they couldn’t find the account.
With my attorney being frustrated as he was only able to settle one account, I took matters into my own hands. I started calling the Credit reporting agencies, most of my alleged delinquent accounts were with Experian. Since I had an attorney I was assigned a specialist I believe he was called. My specialist Douglas Hollon was no help. He finally told me something that I am sure a lot of you have heard, “It’s not my fault you got yourself into the mess your in” and refused to investigate my accounts any more. How many of you had something like this happen to you and just wanted to reach through the phone and grab a hold of that person! I told Mr. Hollon I was going to sue him and he said go ahead.
I just finally got tired of trying to explain myself over and over to creditors, collectors and the credit reporting agencies. I found that their representatives often don't have a clue what consumers rights really are and if they do they really don’t care.
I filed a Federal Complaint against all my creditors pro se (I’m representing myself). My first call after I filed was from the creditors’ attorney from Washington state that my lawyer was willing to settle with for $85. He offered to pay me $600 and offered to delete the account from my credit report like it never existed if I released them from my lawsuit.
I had all my creditors pay me to settle and have their accounts deleted from my credit report. My credit score went from 540 to 750 in three months. I now have 2 cars, a house, I travel and I’m not worried about checking into a hotel, buying dinner for my family, renting a car, getting utilities turned on, or anything else you need good credit for.
People are often scared and intimidated when faced with court. Hiring a Lawyer is very expensive and often times unaffordable to the average person. The process of clearing accounts off your credit report is time consuming. The credit industry knows this and even though they know they are wrong, they also know most people will give up.
I have put together a step by step guide to of how to file a complaint to fix your credit. Sometimes you don’t know where to start. All of the “credit repair programs” require upfront, recurring fees for their services. I am going to tell you what I did myself and how you can do it to. Repairing your credit can seem overwhelming. Go one step at a time and it’s not so overwhelming.
