The following are some of the laws that you should pay close attention to:

Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) - The Fair Credit Reporting Act was enacted
approximately 30 years ago and has had numerous revisions over that time period. FCRA benefits the consumer by putting time restrictions on creditors and credit bureaus to respond to any disputes made by a consumer. If the creditor’s or the credit bureaus fail to respond within the allotted time frame then the credit bureaus must change the credit information in accordance with the consumer’s disputes. This is the basic principal that simple credit repair companies use to fix your credit – “Not very effective in today’s world!” The FCRA also grants creditors and credit bureaus certain conditions to request additional investigative time periods into a consumers dispute.
Furthermore, the FCRA also gives the credit bureaus the option to permanently verify a dispute and never remove it if certain methods weren’t procedurally done by the party disputing the credit item. The FCRA also covers fraud alerts, the statutes of items in dispute for consumer reports, in addition to civil liability of damages for both parties.

Fair and Accurate Credit Transaction Act (FACT Act) came into law several years ago. The FACT Act allows the consumer to receive a credit report annually free of charge.
These will not contain credit scores and maybe a little more difficult to decipher. The FACT Act covers rules of “prevention of reinsertion, blocking information due to identity theft, statute of limitations, and credit wholesaler requirements, etc…

Uniform Commercial Code Laws (UCC Laws) - These are the laws that govern
transactions that are paid by personal or corporate check. The UCC laws also govern the differences and superseding definitions between contracts and legal agreements.
There are many state adaptations and variations to the federal law which cover addendums and legal stipulations when satisfying a debt.

Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) - Is a law that contains procedural rules for third party collectors, consumers and the penalties that may be levied against either party. The FDCPA governs how many times a collector can call a consumer, a consumers place of employment, family members, friends and neighbors. The FDCPA also covers the rules of the assigning of a debt. The FDCPA also notes when state law can override federal law when it comes to collection or credit disputes. The FDCPA covers the rules if a debtor is represented by an attorney that a collection company can not use abusive language, make false threats, and much more.

Equal Credit Protection Act (ECPA) - Contains rules governing when a creditor or collector can report your trade line to the credit bureaus. It also covers if a creditor is obligated or not obligated to report borrowers, co-borrowers, and authorized users on an individual account to the credit bureaus. The ECPA also protects against discrimination for age, race, gender, and religion.

There are approximately eight different scoring variations because the credit bureaus don’t actually score you. All your credit scores come out of San Rafael, California, not the credit bureaus themselves. More on this as you read further down.

Do you want a higher credit score? You may have negative trade lines (individual credit accounts that appear in your credit report) such as late payments, charge offs, collections, foreclosures, repossessions, etc. on your credit report. You may also have too many inquires, aka’s, addresses, or places of employment that may be injuring your credit score.

The good news is it is absolutely legal to remove derogatory or negative items off your credit report and have credit score repair. (As long as the account is obsolete, outdated, misleading, erroneous, the dates opened on the account are incorrect, the dates closed on the account are incorrect, or if you can not recall the account as well as many other reasons.)

With this being said, there are improvements that should be in the credit model. For example; many of us pay on accounts every month and they don’t appear on the credit report, such as car insurance, medical insurance, health club/gym membership, rent, and home utilities. Do these accounts show up on your credit report? Probably not. Your real concern should be improving the key components of your credit score.

You can dispute and remove negative items off your credit report to help increase your score. This should only be initiated once you learn the appropriate methods in disputing and removing of any negative items off the credit report.

You should have in place the following before you start any credit repair on your own:

1. You will need a calendar to time your letters, disputes, and continual correspondence

2. You will need the addresses of the credit bureaus, subsidiary bureaus, creditors, collectors, your State Attorney General, Federal Trade Commission, and possibly a local attorney that you can cc (carbon copy) all your correspondence that you have documented.

3. You will need certified mail as well as a notary

4. You need a spread sheet to track what items have been taken off the credit report so that you don’t continually dispute items that are removed. If you fail to do this the bureaus may consider and declare all your letters to be frivolous in nature and they will legally reserve the right to not investigate or not to change your credit.

5. You should be familiar with the credit laws

Once you have these in place be sure to get familiar with the credit laws as noted in step five. Here are a few things to look out for:

The Fair Credit Reporting Act
Fair and Accurate Credit Transaction Act
UCC laws
Fair Debt Collection Practices Act
Equal Credit Protection Act

There are numerous credit laws that affect positively and negatively both the consumer
and creditor. When viewing credit laws it is important to decipher whether the law is
pertaining to a credit report or the legality of a debt. It is a myth that all consumer debt
is owed for seven years. Almost all debt is governed by state statutes and not by federal law. Check the laws within your own state that govern the legalities of debt.

One final tip for the do it yourself credit repair person that has not taken the option to look into credit repair companies, look at your balances on all your lines of credit. It’s recommended that your balances should be kept preferably under 20 percent, but at a minimum of under 50 percent of the maximum available credit. It is understandable if you cant do this right away, but you should start trying right away. A helpful tip would be to start with one of your lower balance cards and get this to under the 20 percent then work on the next card.