Here are some strategies to quickly improve or rebuild your profile:

Instead of helping consumers correct possibly inaccurate credit report entries, they attempt to have any negative information removed—whether the negative information is correct isn’t relevant to their efforts. Credit repair companies cannot fix your credit.

To help make you a better applicant, credit repair companies often promise to improve your credit — in return for a fee. These companies typically offer to review your credit reports and address any negative items that they can with the credit bureaus on your behalf.

1. Pay bills on time.
2. Make frequent payments.
3. Ask for higher credit limits.
4. Dispute credit report errors.
5. Become an authorized user.
6. Use a secured credit card.
7. Keep credit cards open.
8. Mix it up.

1. File a dispute with the credit reporting agency.
2. File a dispute directly with the reporting business.
3. Negotiate “pay-for-delete” with the creditor.
4. Send a request for “goodwill deletion”
5. Hire a credit repair service.
6. Work with a credit counseling agency.
7. Get a free copy of your credit report.

This usually means producing proof that the debt was assigned to it. Often such proof will be a bill of sale, an “assignment”, or a receipt between the last creditor holding the debt and the entity suing you.

Paying an outstanding debt is always better than not paying it, but how much it will affect your credit score (if at all) depends on other factors in your credit history. For example, if you have too much outstanding debt, eliminating that debt will have a positive impact on that factor.