My husband and I went through debt counsel and we didnt know at the time that it hurt our credit score. We went to buy a house and thats when we were told luckly we had pd off our debt but it tok awhile to bring our score up. I know the company we went through pd some of our bills late even though they had our money in advanced. I work for a credit card company and see this all the time where the pymnts are late and they went through a consolidating company. so be sure you check the companies out first before you choose

Go it yourself for free!

1. Order your credit reports from the 3 bureaus
If you’re ordering for the first time, get your score (for a fee) from Equifax as their scoring matters most.

2. Make copies of your report and put the originals in a binder. On the photocopied reports use a highlighter and check for any incorrect, outdate, false, etc…info

3. Download a dispute letter(s) from the credit bureaus website and list anything that is wrong. Mail them to their office(s). They have 30 days to reply.

4. If they will not remove something that is not yours or too old (> 7 years) as them for a debt validation. This may take an additional 30 days.

5. Once the ‘baddies’ come off, take care not to let any of your other accounts fall into that predicament.

6. If you haven’t already make sure your existing accounts are current and paid on time ALWAYS.

7. Get a secured credit card with or for like $500-1000 or more if you can and use it sparingly. Charge like $50 on the card each month and pay it in FULL and on TIME. Make sure you do this for a minimum of 6 months so that you estabish a positive repayment history.

8. Problem with just letting them ‘fall off’ is that they may never. You may get sued before that…that’s where you suddenly get a summons to appear in court and a judgment for collection against you.
For the 2 collection items…pay them but get a ‘pay for delete’ from the collectin agency in WRITING…they’ll delete it after you pay and it will help your credit score