Posts Tagged ‘future’
Becoming A Credit Bureau VIP
September 23, 2009 | 
Author It seems to me that there may be solid, usable methods to getting into the “VIP Departments” of the credit bureaus, and that there may be some real advantages to doing so if you can pull it off.
If you don’t already know, each credit bureau has a “vip department” where the issues and disputes relating to “important” people get taken care of.
The most obvious way to become a VIP is to be someone who can do some damage to the credit bureau: an attorney, a politician, a high profile business person or celebrity. There may be other ways to have your disputes handled by the VIP department, though.
One forum member, for example, reported that their disputes were being handled by the “priority” department because they had an attorney contact the bureau on their behalf. Will this work for all of us? Probably not all the time, no, but we may have other options.
Are you a VIP? If so how did you get there? Seriously, if you’re reading this and you care to share the details with the world, please feel free.
As for our part, we will keep working and researching to see what may come of this potentially powerful angle to credit repair. Stay tuned, and I’ll try to keep you updated as we learn more about how to become a VIP.
Posted in Info | 
Tags: credit bureaus, credit repair, credit repair methods, credit secrets, future, indirect action, luck | 
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OCR: How Three Seemingly Harmless Letters May Hurt Your Credit
If you haven’t already heard the news, here’s the sum of it: the bureaus are now using “OCR” (Optical Character Recognition) technology to “read” disputes via computer and, if possible, automatically categorize them and even possibly flag them as frivolous.
For the credit bureaus, OCR is an attempt to automate more of their process. By reducing the need for human labor and categorizing and cataloging disputes via computer software as they are received, the credit bureaus can accomplish several things:
- Reduce the likelihood of human error
- Reduce staffing costs
- Automatically “fingerprint” disputes and store in a database
- Detect if similar disputes have been received before
- If the dispute can be automatically categorized (with a numerical e-Oscar code), the dispute can be forwarded to the creditor via e-Oscar with no human intervention whatsoever. At the very least, the computer can do all the work and a human can just review the results and click a button to approve it.
Where the problem really gets kicked into high gear is starting at item #3.
Here’s the problem:
- 100% of credit repair companies use form letters of some kind.
- 99% of credit repair books tell you to do the same
- If the bureaus can tell you are using a letter that they’ve seen before (such as a template from a credit repair product), they may flag your dispute as frivolous “right out of the box”.
So let’s say you buy some “Dummy Credit Repair” book and do what it says. You use their templates (the ones that match your problems) to send to the bureaus. Maybe you have been a victim of identity theft and have several accounts that are genuinely “NOT YOURS”. So you pick the appropriate template, and send them away.
Then the bureaus receive your letters and their computers say “Hey, we’ve already gotten hundreds of letters that look just like this… this is obviously frivolous.” And before you can say “OCR”, your dispute is rejected (or in many cases seemingly ignored).
Here’s the thing you really need to know about OCR: The only way it will hurt you is if you aren’t prepared for it.
If you are aware of it, and will take steps to protect yourself, the letters O C and R will remain mostly harmless for you.
What steps can you take? We’re still working on what we believe will be the best answer for this, but for now, the following will have to suffice:
- Don’t use a credit repair company.
- Hand write your disputes, or use strange fonts with unusual colors. This makes it difficult for the “OCR” scanner to read your dispute, requiring (hopefully) an actual human being to take a look at it.
- Make sure your disputes are HUMAN READABLE… use standard letter formats that make sense. The delicate balance is to thwart the computer without totally screwing up your chances when your dispute reaches a live person.
We are working on methods to help consumers better deal with the potentially negative effects of those three innocent letters. I’ll be sure to keep you posted as we further develop those methods.
Posted in Info | Tags: credit, credit bureaus, credit repair, credit repair letters, credit repair methods, future, News, OCR | Comments Closed
Turning Bad Luck Into Profits
I read a newspaper article recently that had this headline: “Your Bad Luck Is a Windfall For Airlines”. The article talked about how change fees and cancellation fees produce about $2 BILLION in revenue per year for the airline industry. So missed flights, changed plans, traffic jams, and more… all this “bad luck” leads to billions for the airline industry.
I got to thinking about this and realized that the airline industry isn’t the only industry making a killing off of consumers’ bad luck. Creditors, credit bureaus, and collection agencies make more money when things go downhill for you. (Notice that I included “credit bureaus” in that list… remember, it is more profitable for them if you have bad credit–more on that in a later post!)
These companies can’t really be faulted 100% for this, because it is really widespread and more or less just the way the system works. Your doctor, your mechanic, your attorney, and your plumber also profit from your bad luck… but it’s not like you’re going to do your own brain surgery any time soon, so you’re probably glad that your doctor is around to help.
What we can really take from this is that there is a positive side to everything; and the key for us is finding that and applying it so that it can benefit us. You may think your bad credit is nothing-but-bad for you. Think again. We all KNOW it has a negative side, but look for the positive side.
Many consumers have totally screwed up their credit, and ended up on our web pages in an attempt to dig themselves out. Many of those same consumers then decide that they wanted to help others dig out too, and end up starting their own profitable credit restoration businesses as a result. Some do it part time, some even full time, but in either case they have now crossed over and have learned to profit from their own bad luck.
Even if you don’t want to start a credit repair business, you could still profit from your bad credit. By fixing your credit today, and positioning yourself for the future, you could be setting yourself up to take advantage of one of the biggest financial opportunities of the next 50 years. What’s the opportunity? If you don’t already know, we’ll leave that for another post.
Posted in Info | Tags: credit, credit repair, credit repair business, future, luck, money | Comments Closed
Million Dollar Discount
In a recent WSJ article it tells how a woman named Susan reduced the asking price of her home by $1,000,000 to $2.25 million… and even after the million dollar discount, nobody was apparently interested.
She got an offer for $1.6 million, which is LESS than what she paid in 1999, and HALF of her original asking price.
These numbers are huge, and I personally would not buy a million-dollar home… but this certainly presents a worthwhile opportunity for those who are paying attention.
Housing prices are dropping and mortgage troubles are multiplying, and if you and I are smart, we will do two things in response to this:
1. Get our “stuff” together now… our ducks in a row, if you will, and start building or rebuilding our credit (and our financial picture) to where it needs to be, and…
2. Hopefully as a result of #1, position ourselves so that when the right half-price housing deal comes our way, we can jump on it. Many who think ahead will jump on not just one, but several.
So rather than stress about the economy and healthcare and whether or not you’ll have a job tomorrow (and believe me, I understand all of these stresses), my advice would be to use that energy to work on positioning yourself for financial success in the future. (That’s what I’m doing.)
Worrying will not make you 1 single cent richer. Getting over it and building credit, saving money, taking action to make more money, and doing more with the money you have–these things will make you a lot of cents richer.
If you start preparing today, EVEN IF YOU MISS YOUR MARK, you will be much better off than those who sat, and worried, and did nothing.
