Common Complaints Against Lexington Law
Lexington Law Customers Share 4 Types of Complaints About Its Credit Repair Services
It’s easy to find consumer complains about Lexington Law Firm online. Consumers report four types of problems with Lexington Law Firm. Consumers say the company:
- Is quick to sign-up customers for premium service, but works slowly to remove derogatory accounts in their credit reports
- Drags its feet when customers cancel their service
- Fails to disclose all of its fees.
- Offers low-quality service
People who identify themselves a former employees say the company has incentives to process cancelation requests incorrectly, employees hang-up or improperly transfer calls when a customer asks to cancel their service, or requires customers to send cancelation requests in writing, which the company loses or otherwise fails to process.
How Lexington Law Firm Works
The company, based in Salt Lake City, Utah, promises to help its customers remove or correct incorrect information appearing on their credit reports. The company offers several levels of service, costing up to $100 per month.
Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, consumers are permitted to challenge any incorrect information appearing in their credit reports. According to FTC reports, about 1 in 4 credit reports contain errors serious enough to harm a consumer's credit score. By law, the consumer credit reporting agencies — which include Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion — must correct errors in consumers’ credit reports.
It's easy to file a correction request on your own.
The "secret sauce" Lexington Law Firm and its competitors offer is experience in removing many incorrect items at once. Under the FCRA, if Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion think the request to remove or change the incorrect information is "frivolous," they have the option to ignore the request. Accordingly, if you have many corrections, the best tactic is to space-out the correct requests over several months to avoid the requests appearing frivolous.
You can track many correction requests on your own. Make a spreadsheet that contains a list of all of the items you wish to correct at Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion, one account per row. In the first column, set future dates when you will send each correction request. Send each credit bureau one or two corrections per month. In a separate column, record the status of each request.
What Lexington Law Firm Cannot Do
Lexington Law Firm and its competitors can’t promise to remove anything from your credit reports. The best any credit repair organization can promise is to try to remove inaccurate information.
When it comes to what appears in your credit reports, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion are in the drivers' seats. You, Lexington Law, and any other credit repair organization can ask, beg, and threaten Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion to remove something you don't like from your credit report. But you don’t own your information, they do, and if they decide to leave something you don’t like on your credit report, nothing short of a libel lawsuit will force them to act.
Credit repair is designed to remove inaccurate information. Credit repair is not designed to remove accurate derogatory information that inconveniences you. If an accurate derogatory account appears on your credit report, do not expect Lexington Law or another credit repair organization to remove that information.
A common Lexington Law complaint is its sales representatives imply the company can remove accurate, inconvenient derogatories. Sometimes the company can remove these accurate accounts, but do not expect the removal to be permanent.
Why Lexington Law Can't Promise To Remove Derogatories
Credit repair organizations can't promise they will repair your credit because they have not control over the process. Here’s a simplified explanation of how Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion respond to a correction request:
- A clerk at Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion decides if the request is "frivolous." If the clerk thinks it is, you will receive a rejection letter.
- The clerk classifies the dispute with a two-digit code. Your reason for removing or changing the falase information should be simple and clear, because any nuanced argument you make for removing the information will be lost.
- The clerk sends an electronic message to the creditor that reported the information. The message contains the two-digit code describing your dispute. The creditor must respond with either a correction, affirmation of the existing information, or request to delete the information.
- If the creditor who furnished the information does not respond, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion must remove the information from the consumer’s credit report.
Because Lexington Law rarely makes contact with the creditor furnishing the disputed information, it has limited or no influence on how the furnisher responds to the dispute.
One can dispute information on a credit report by contacting the creditor that furnished the information to Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. However, that tactic is rarely successful, except in situations where the consumer files a lawsuit against the creditor for making a false report to Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion.
What You Can Do Yourself
You can correct inaccurate information appearing in your Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion credit report yourself. Follow this Bills.com article explaining the step-by-step instructions on how to dispute errors on your credit report.
Lexington Law Firm is not a debt resolution firm. If you have old, uncollected debt appearing on your credit report, talk to a Bills.com debt resolution partner to solve the debt before even considering credit repair.
Bills Action Plan
Lexington Law Firm's credit repair is an expensive alternative to you disputing incorrect information on your Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion credit reports yourself. The company is excellent at signing-up customers, but the number and consistency of consumer complaints indicates the company may not describe its fees adequately, and is slow to discontinue services when requested. There are also troubling comments made by former employees about its business practices.
While Lexington Law, does remove negative remarks. They got our score up. But, due to financial issues, they refused to close our account. So, I had to go to the bank and physically block their attempts to bill. It's $19.95 to pull your credit report, then they set-up their own Experian membership, bill you $4.95 each time, they remove a negative remark, plus $64. Cancelling is IMPOSSIBLE. I had to go and call the bank, to find out where all of these membership fee's came from, they had no clue, so they blocked them. They also continuiously, spam call your phone. That's fine for updates, but not all of the time. All in all, I didn't know that I could send good will letters on my behalf, and also remove negative items myself. It's advertising is very misleading, and doesn't fully include, ALL of the fee's that they charge, you including logging into your Experian or other cra accounts, to set-up memberships on your behalf, without asking.