Many people find out too late – at the exact moment when they need to rely on their credit – that their score falls short of what a lender would like to see. When you’re desperate for a quick fix is when scam artists present you with a credit repair claim that looks too good to be true.

One common scam that’s prevalent on the web today are the ones that claim they know people within the bureaus that they can sweet talk into deleting unsatisfactory items from your reports. They may know people who work within the agencies, but no one is going to risk their job to erase things from your record just because someone asked them to do it for a stranger.

Now, there are ways to get incorrect information deleted from your report, and this can help improve your score. However, you can do this yourself. You have the right to report that something is incorrect and if it’s determined that the credit bureau has truly made an error, that information must be deleted from your report — and usually within a fixed period of time.

Of course, there are companies that can do this for you, but why would you spend the money? You can simply do it yourself. And of course, you’re not guaranteed that someone who’s promising to repair your credit report will actually do so. Most likely, they’re just out to take your money, or even worse. Again, take care of mistakes yourself and save yourself money and headaches.

Other scammers will claim that they can ‘convince’ the credit reporting bureaus that the debts on your report are not yours or otherwise invalid. You are the one who incurred those debts, so you should know that no one is going to ‘convince’ the credit reporting bureaus that those obligations are anyone’s but yours.

The company that tells you this will either take the money and run or will make a weak attempt at a resolution and then charge you anyway. No debt can be erased from a record unless it’s proven to be false or it’s too old for it to be still listed on the reports.

Another common scam to look out for is companies that say they can change the whole credit file into one good clean one. Sorry, it won’t really happen. Your debts will remain on there and any activity you do will be reported on it. There’s no true way to get a clean record without paying off your debts and paying bills on time.

There are some companies that are even offering loans with their credit repair services. Don’t fall for that. A legitimate company will repair what truly needs to be repaired and that’s it. If you need a loan, that should be done by you.

Devious and more annoying than destructive, some credit repair scams will urge you to call a special (1-900) telephone number for more information and detailed instructions on how to repair your credit. (1-900) telephone numbers levy steep per-minute charges, and the information you are provided is generally incorrect or simply drawn from free public sources.

Even though there are companies out there that will legitimately fix incorrect items on your credit report, the best advice is not to use these, either. Fixing incorrect listings on your credit report is something you can do easily yourself by reporting the error to the credit bureau itself. The agency must by law investigate and correct the error if indeed the information is false or incorrect. And in the end, you’ll have a corrected credit report that you didn’t spend a dime on fixing, only a little elbow grease of your own.