Be Careful Who Fixes Your Credit

If you've got bad credit, it likely stems from one or more of the following issues: missing payments on your loans, personal bankruptcy or just having too high of a debt load. Bad credit can also result from mistakes on your credit report that are not your fault.

Whether it's your fault or not, bad credit can cost you. And that may hurt even more in these days of tight credit.

If you're working on cleaning up your credit, you may get pitched by services offering to do it for you. But they can't do anything more than you can do yourself.

What's more, some credit repair organizations (CROs) are on the shady side. In fact, consumer complaints related to CROs have been on the rise over the past few years -- they were up 34% between 2004 and 2006, according to the Better Business Bureau. ...