There is a type of company that, even though it is regulated by federal legislation and has been in existence for decades, is among the most maligned in the country. Despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of Americans have taken advantage of the services offered by the companies and individuals who comprise the industry, there are still people who are adamant that the entire industry is a scam and anyone who is a part of it is a con-artist.

After seeing the title of this article, it's apparent the industry we're referring to is the credit repair industry. Despite the fact that the oldest credit repair companies have been around for 20 years, that credit repair services have helped Americans delete millions of damaging listings from their credit reports, and that Congress created the Credit Repair Organizations Act (CROA) in order to regulate credit repair companies and not to make them illegal, there are "experts" in the media, in major corporations, and in government positions that claim that any company who offers credit repair services should be avoided.

There are logical reasons why people believe credit repair services are a scam. To start with, there have been many "credit repair" clinics whose goal really was to scam people. These clinics promised the world but ended up just taking people's money. Left and right people desperate to improve their credit scores were falling for these con jobs to the extent that the media and legal attention these clinics received was enough to put a cloud over the entire industry. Instead of bothering to try separating the good services from the bad, many people opted to believe that the entire industry was fraudulent.

And making this conclusion was pretty easy because there are some pretty massive institutions that want people to believe that credit repair companies are not to be trusted. And who are these institutions? They are the credit reporting agencies (credit bureaus) who manage your credit report and the lenders who make use of your credit scores. The credit bureaus do not want people to try to fix their credit. It is bad business. The credit bureaus make their money by taking information about you, assembling it in a report, and selling it. Credit repair creates additional work that costs them money and when you are dealing with hundreds of millions of credit reports, it would cost them dearly if everyone out there started trying to clean up their credit. On the other hand, many lenders such as credit card companies don't want you to clean up your credit because if you increase your credit score, they won't be able to charge you as high of interest rates. So, given the scale of the entities that would rather you didn't attempt to improve your credit and the fact that their profits are on the line, it is little wonder that when people try to confirm their concerns about credit repair companies, they are able to find plenty of information. Also consider the huge budgets these organizations can allocate for lobbying lawmakers and planting stories in media outlets and there is little wonder why the amount of anti-credit repair information dwarfs anything from the pro-credit repair crowd.

Combine these factors and it is easy to see why people are convinced that there is no such thing as credit repair and why it is so difficult to persuade them otherwise.

Someday the situation may change. As more and more people are able to successfully improve their credit score with help from credit repair companies there are more people who know credit repair works to counter the population that believes it does not. But until there are enough success stories to make a difference, the consumers who do their research, find a reputable credit repair company, and work to fix their credit will be the fortunate few because their credit scores will be that much higher than those of the people who will do nothing.