Have you heard the one about the magical companies that can repair your bad credit in only 24 hours time? If you have, you might want to reconsider such an offer because it is likely fraudulent. There is no way you can repair your bad credit in a day’s time, no matter how much you pay someone to try.

On the other hand, there are companies who can get a credit score recalculated in a couple of days. These companies are called rescoring companies and they work with the major credit reporting agencies to rescore your credit score. The catch here is that the rescoring companies do no work for the general public but rather offer services to brokers and mortgage lenders. As a consumer, you would have to go through a third party such as a mortgage lender in order to have your credit score recalculated. There are fees incurred for such a service and on average you can expect to pay up to $50 for each item on your report that has been fixed.

It may seem like a good chunk of change to pay by the item but the reality is that the process of rapid rescoring can help you out dramatically. For instance, if you are asking a mortgage lender to help you rescore your credit score, you stand a better chance of qualifying for better terms for a mortgage, making your monthly payments less expensive. Rapid rescoring can also help when you have been the victim of identity theft and your credit was harmed in the process. While you could repair your own credit score over time, usually several months, rapid rescoring can help clear up your report in a faster period of time.

So who else can use rapid rescoring?

It is recommended that any individual with a FICO credit score below a 680 who is planning to apply for a loan or a mortgage within the next 30-60 days. If you have more time to wait before the application, it is better to repair your credit report on your own. This process can take up to 6 months or more to see the impact on your credit score. Repairing your own credit over time will be beneficial in ways that rapid rescoring is not. First of all, it is virtually free to work on repairing your own report; plus, rapid rescoring can only do so much. For instance, if you have issues on your credit report that show negative activity such as late payments or disputes, a rapid rescorer can not get those things removed. Rapid rescoring will also not be able to help you in the event that your credit score has been affected by your own inability to pay off debts. Rapid rescoring is only to be used in the event that a company has made a mistake in reporting on your credit to the major credit reporting agencies. If a company concedes to having made a mistake or agrees to have certain information removed from your report.

If you intend to use rapid rescoring, you will need to provide backup documentation that information has been erroneously reported on your credit report, such as a letter from your credit card company. You should also know that while many rapid rescoring companies claim they can update your credit report within a few days, there may be occasions that require additional time to complete the process. If you are in an extreme hurry to have a better credit score, you can not rely on rapid rescoring to come through for you. For all intents and purposes, it is much wiser to forgo the loan application now and work on improving your credit over the next six months to a year before you consider applying for any lending.