THE CREDIT REPAIR PRE-LITIGATION DISPUTES MOVEMENT

Steven got into credit repair in 2008. At the time he was a finance manager in the car business and had a portfolio of rental properties. The market was crashing and Steven saw himself getting ready to enter his own personal financial free-fall.

Steven met some folks who he partnered with to do credit repair and after a year he re-booted the business on his own. In 2009, Steven did 3 things that at the time he would never have known would have laid the foundation for the Credit Repair Pre-Litigation Disputes movement which would start to take hold almost a decade later in 2020. Steven read a consumer protection law book called Fair Credit Reporting by the National Consumer Law Center which laid out the entire framework of how credit bureaus, debt collectors, and financial institutions are supposed to operate. He purchased the training manual for the industry standard of how to report accurate data. This manual is called the Credit Reporting Resource Guide and the industry standard data format is called Metro2®. And finally, he went on a journey to find a lawyer with whom he could work in tandem to help his clients sue credit bureaus and data furnishers for not conforming to their own industry standard for accurate credit reporting.

In 2012 Steven had his first clients file suit against the credit bureaus and data furnishers for what Steven believed were violations on their part of their own industry standards. Over the next several years Steven had around 40 clients sue the credit bureaus and data furnishers in order for the consumers to get the credit bureaus and data furnishers to fix the credit reports so that they would conform to the industry standard for accuracy.

Through this process Steven learned that it is never easy being David going against Goliath. Over this period of time Steven was subpoena’d several dozen times and required to appear in depositions almost as many times where the credit bureaus and data furnishers would ask him questions as a fact witness regarding the client disputes and accuracy issues involved in the consumer litigation.

Steven realized that the power and resources that these companies possess to continuously subpoena and depose him meant that he had to develop a more efficient method of helping consumers enforce their consumer rights against these titan corporations.

Over the next few years Steven regrouped his business, learned new skills including taxes, bookkeeping, and general accounting, and he re-tooled his credit repair strategy to involve the furnishers in subsequent disputes as well as to use laws other than the FCRA to dispute errors with the furnishers and financial institutions.

Since almost the beginning of this journey, Steven would either set up the client disputes as an affidavit for the client to adopt or he would use a Power of Attorney and prepare the client disputes on his company letterhead on behalf of the consumer. This counter-culture approach to credit repair was ahead of its time and would ultimately set the stage for the Credit Repair Pre-Litigation Disputes movement to take shape.

In late 2019 Steven found out by pure accident that this movement was waiting to be unleashed. Steven was in a credit repair Facebook group and he made the post that sparked this movement. Steven posted that his standard credit repair method involves getting a notarized POA from each client and that he sends all correspondence out to the credit bureaus and furnishers on his company letterhead. This seemingly simple post set in motion a series of events that would change the credit repair industry forever. This one post lead to almost a dozen people reaching out to steven wanting to learn more about the “POA dispute method” as they almost all called it.

Realizing that there were people who were wanting to learn how to improve their credit repair businesses and to operate in a more transparent manner, Steven started the Credit Repair Pre-Litigation Disputes Training Group which is designed to be powerful enough for the most seasoned company but cost effective enough for the smallest start-up company. This training course is the only credit repair training course fully endorsed by Matt Listro, founder of Credit Con.

Today, Steven is the founder of the Credit Repair Pre-Litigation Disputes movement which is comprised of credit repair small business owners who have a hunger to dispute credit on a higher level that that which the credit repair industry traditionally teaches.