Is this the same as hiring a credit repair company?
No, and that is the point. Credit repair companies send the letters you are about to send yourself, then charge you $79 to $129 a month to keep sending them. Under the Credit Repair Organizations Act they cannot legally charge you before delivering services or promise to remove accurate information, and a great many of them do both. The letters are in Section 12. The postage is a few dollars.
I have real, accurate negatives. Is this still worth it?
Yes, but read Section 7 first so you know what you are buying. Nothing removes accurate, verifiable information ahead of schedule. What Section 7 does give you is the actual menu: goodwill requests, pay-for-delete and its real success rate, the drop-off date for every item you have, and the strategy of outweighing old damage with new history. Most people also find at least one error while they are in there.
How long does this take?
Ninety days for the first full pass, and the plan in Section 13 sequences it week by week. Bureaus get 30 days to investigate, 45 if you send extra documentation mid-window, so a fair amount of that time is waiting. Round two, if you need it, adds another six weeks.
Do I need to pay for a credit monitoring service?
No. Section 2 covers pulling all three reports free, every week, from the only federally authorized site. For a score, your card issuer or bank almost certainly gives you one free already.
Is this a PDF or a physical book?
A PDF, formatted for US Letter and designed to be printed. Eleven of the pages are fill-in worksheets, so they want paper and a pencil. It reads fine on a tablet if you would rather annotate there.
Is this legal advice?
No. It is education. It explains how the Fair Credit Reporting Act and Fair Debt Collection Practices Act generally work and how to use them yourself. If you are being sued by a debt collector, facing wage garnishment, or weighing bankruptcy, you need a consumer law attorney rather than a workbook, and the workbook says so and tells you where to look.
The rules keep changing. Will this go out of date?
Some of it will, which is why every buyer gets every revised edition free, forever. The medical debt rules alone changed twice in two years, and Section 3 covers exactly where that landed and what is actually in force.
What if it isn't for me?
Email
support@penciledinfinance.com within 30 days and you get the full amount back. You do not have to explain why, return anything, or prove you did the worksheets.
