 TITLE: Credit Repair: How to “Fix” Your Credit Yourself CONTENT: What Is the Credit Repair Organizations Act?\n--------------------------------------------\nCredit repair companies dispute negative information found on your credit reports. But in the past, some of these companies would overstate what they could do for consumers to drum up business.\nThe Credit Repair Organizations Act (CROA) is a federal law that became effective on April 1, 1997, in response to a number of consumers who had suffered from credit repair scams. In effect, the law ensures that credit repair service companies:\n*   Are prohibited from taking any payment from a consumer until they fully complete the services they promise.\n*   Are required to provide consumers with a written contract stating all the services to be provided as well as the terms and conditions of payment. Under the law, consumers have three days to withdraw from the contract.\n*   Are forbidden to ask or suggest that you mislead credit reporting companies about your credit accounts or alter your identity to change your credit history.\n*   Cannot knowingly make deceptive or false claims concerning the services they are capable of offering.\n*   Cannot ask you to sign anything that states that you are forfeiting your rights under the CROA. Any waiver that you sign cannot be enforced.\nThe CROA adds transparency and due diligence to the credit repair process, making it less likely that consumers will be taken advantage of. However, regulators have still found wrongdoing among credit repair companies.\nThe Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has sued several credit repair companies over the years for requesting prohibited upfront fees, misleading customers about their ability to fix credit and more. END