Went back to my old neighborhood and saw the credit repair shop I used is now a vape store

That place on Foster Road helped me fix my score from 540 to 680 back in 2015, and now it's just selling fruity clouds and candy flavors, anyone else feel like the whole industry shifted away from actual help?

3 comments

3 Comments

fiona_kim9717d ago

Honestly, those places actually saved people who didn't even know where to start.

mileslane17d ago

Wait I gotta correct you on one thing - that place on Foster Road was never actually a credit repair shop. It was a check cashing place that had a "credit services" sign in the window, I used em too back in 2014. They charged me like $400 for some generic dispute letters I could've written myself. But you're right about the vibe shift, its wild how all those storefronts either turned into vape shops or those weird CBD places. Makes me wonder if credit repair was just a fad that died out once people realized most of those companies couldn't actually do anything you can't do for free on Credit Karma.

wright.leo17d ago

Yeah, I gotta push back on that last part about it being a fad that died out. I mean look, you're not wrong that a lot of those places were shady and overcharged for stuff you could do yourself. But saying credit repair was just a fad? Nah, I don't think so. Back when I used that place on Foster in 2016, I had no clue what a credit report even was or how to read it. My score was stuck in the 500s for years cause of old medical bills and I didn't know where to start, they walked me through the whole process step by step. I'm not saying everyone needed that kind of help, but for people like me who came from a family where nobody talked about money or credit, those storefronts were like a bridge to understanding the system. I see them more as a sign of how many people were left out of the financial loop, not some trend that disappeared once everyone got smarter.