Cleaning up a credit report can be time consuming. Most of the times you do not even find out about something being on your credit report until you are applying for a new home loan, car loan, or credit card. It always happens when you least expect it. Worst of all is that it could be a little bit embarrassing too. Most companies will pull a merged credit report from the three major companies and each account in question will say where its being reported. When you look at it you will be able to contact each bureau and start asking about each account.

The first phone call should be to the credit bureau itself. Equifax is the biggest and most popular. You can bet that your creditor contacted them. To be able to work with them you will have to purchase a credit report from them. From there you will start going over the accounts in question. You might get lucky and only have to deal with Equifax because many companies only work with them.

The next place to try would be at My Fico. They created the fico score and work with all three reporting companies. When you decide to go with them you might have to pay a little bit more to do so as they are going to contact all of the accounts outstanding on your report and do the work for you. After obtaining the account numbers they will inform you of who you need to pay to close or cancel out an account. After you pay the bill, My Fico will forward the info to Equifax, Experian, and Trans Union on your behalf.

If you want to not only get your credit report cleaned up but have your accounts in question reduced to a lower balance or zeroed out completely then you should call Lexington Law. This is a law firm who specializes in helping people clean up their credit reports and also negotiate lower balances for their clients. You will probably pay a little more to work for them but in turn you could pay less to your debtors and let them do all the work. When all accounts are settled, they will forward the statements to the credit bureaus for you.

If you plan on cleaning up your credit report then take the time to start with the three companies above. Each can tell you a lot about what you need to do. The deeper down the list you go the more it will cost you to work with them. With the end goal to clean up your credit it might sound costly now but paying higher rates on other things you want to buy might be costlier with bad credit.