Dear Personal Finance Dude: I have some glitches in my credit report (I got
a report from Equifax a few months ago) and keep being tempted by the e-mail
I get saying that they can erase my bad debt, create me a new credit
identity, remove bad loans from my credit report, etc., etc. My gut instinct
is that they’re all bogus, but tell me, PFD, what CAN I do to fix my credit
report? Signed, Searching But Skeptical

Dear SBS, you ask a darn good question, and I too get these ridiculous spam
messages that claim they can enlarge my um, err, nevermind. Anyway, yeah,
there are a lot of people who claim they can ‘fix’ your credit report, but
if you think about it, the whole value of a credit history is that it can’t
be altered without lots of hassle. So while it’s possible to correct errors
in your report, you’ll end up going through either your creditor (like
Sears, say, or Conoco) or the credit reporting agency anyway, so why pay a
middleman to tell you what you can find out for free on the Net anyway?
Start here.

Good luck!
PFD [Dave Taylor]