Fixing Credit

I checked my credit report last October (2007) and was surprised to see three items on there that I didn’t know about. The first was a bill from 4 years ago by Southen California Edison for $12.82 that had been charged off. The second was an outstanding amount due from Chase for purchases at a local store, which was a valid charge, but somehow I had never gotten the bill, and was now about 6 months late. Finally, the third item was an erroneous charge from TD Waterhouse for $229.00.My fico score was way lower than I thought it would be, so I resigned myself to trying to fix those issues. I investigated all three and it turns out that the Southern California Edison and Chase charges were correct, so I paid them, albeit very late. The Third charge, TD Waterhouse was incorrect, and so I wrote to Equifax and asked them to remove the charge since it wasn’t valid. Within about 2 weeks, Equifax wrote me back and said they’d investigated and had removed the charge.So, I thought, no problem. My fico score would improve drastically and sunny days would return again. Boy, was I wrong. I just checked my fico score again, and its only gone up 70 points. My score is still low (not quite as low as it was, but its still too low) and even though I have no debt, no chargeoffs, a high available credit amount and I’ve paid off everything, they still consider me a bad risk. They are punishing me because I have two late payments out of about 35 reportable items.I’ve drawn two conclusions from this.First, if you really want to fix your credit you will need to hire a firm like Lexington Law and have them fix all the issues. They have a very good track record and are able to clean it up a lot better than I can do.Second, do not pay any bills late. In my case, I didn’t even know I had the bills….I don’t know what you can do if the bill never comes , or is lost in the mail or whatever. But if you can help it at all, don’t pay late.If you are interested in aggressively fixing your fico score, then its to your advantage to contact the Lexington Law Firm.