A number of years ago I went through a rough patch. Bills piled up, payments were late, and eventually several accounts fell so far behind they were charged off by the creditors and sent to collection.

When the smoke cleared my credit report was a mess. My accounts seemed to have replicated themselves with new account numbers, there were two or three collections for each account that had been charged off. It was a sight.

Here is the story of my quest for a return to the world of good credit and how I finally discovered Sky Blue Credit Repair, the credit repair company that saved my life... well, they saved my credit anyway... and that was a lot!

I was very hopeful. I got online and found Lexington Law right away. Great website. I was comforted by the idea of having an attorney work on my case. I figured that it was a safe bet.

They bragged about serving over 300,000 customers. Wow! (I just looked, now they say 500,000 - double wow!). Maybe the big numbers should have been a warning. I guess it crossed my mind. Did I really want to be just one little guy being serviced by a gigantic machine?

Anyway, the site was slick, the girl on the phone was nice enough, and I signed up. It was the start of a very frustrating 4 months.

Here is how it all panned out...

Once upon a time I decided to service my own car. It seemed like a good idea. There was a nice looking "Change Your Own Oil" shop down the street. So, I paid $15 and was assigned a garage bay. One hour later I emerged covered in oil, bloody knuckles and a determination never to do that again.

It turns out that Lexington Law (LL) is a lot like the "Change Your Own Oil" shop. They don't exactly make it a secret, but somehow I missed the information. Once I signed up I was given a password to my "Dispute Valet" account and was expected to go online and manage my own credit repair process.

Somehow I expected to get some kind of customer service, interactive consulting, hands on treatment. This was the furthest thing from it. I never spoke to an attorney, and I'm certain that no attorney ever looked at my "case".

The LL website also references the number of "paralegals" they have on staff, implying that you will always have some sort of legal guidance. I have since heard that in the state of Utah, where LL is based, that anyone who is employed by a law firm can be called a paralegal - with no legal training required at all... Phew.

Four months later I quit. A few things were deleted. My credit scores were lower. And all of my questions had been deflected in a very frustrating manner.

Enough of that! So I set off to figure things out on my own.

So, I decided to get a handle on this credit repair business myself. I figured that there was more to it than having a machine send off dispute letters. Boy was I right.

I shopped around on Amazon and picked out a book called Best Credit by a man named Dana Neal. The book is 437 pages long and, as far as I'm concerned, there is no fluff.

He makes a great point right up front that if you intend to do your own credit repair you should read the whole book before doing anything!

It was a great read. I felt much better informed after reading it. I recommend it strongly. Unfortunately, even though I ended up with a reasonable "working knowledge" of the credit repair process, I also realized that I didn't have the time or energy to undertake the job in a proper manner.

But I did end up with enough information to set off on a search for a truly professional credit repair company. Now I knew what questions to ask, what type of approach really works, and what to avoid.

Over the next few weeks I interviewed a dozen or so credit repair operations. Ovation Law and Bradley Ross turned out to be clones of LL. I believe they use the same exact software! Ovation calls their version "Dispute Manager", and Bradley Ross calls theirs "Case Valet". There was no way I was going down that road again.

I found a site that listed the Top Ten Best Credit Repair Services and spoke with Apex Credit Services, Veracity Credit, and My Credit Group. They were all clearly more hands-on than LL and its clones, but did not quite impress me.

Then I found Sky Blue Credit Repair. All of my questions were answered clearly. It all made perfect sense and they clearly knew their business. I was totally impressed and decided to give them a try...

It is a pleasure to talk to someone who knows what they're talking about. It's easy to tell the difference. That's the experience I had when I called Sky Blue Credit Repair. There was no double talk or avoiding my questions. What a relief. And what a difference!

As soon as I signed up I got a nice "welcome email" telling me what I needed to do to get my credit reports and get them over to Sky Blue. They had explained to me that they would be in touch with me within a few days for a consultation.

A few days later I got a call from one of their reps, who spent close to 45 minutes chatting with me about my credit and the dispute process. He explained everything that I needed to do to improve my credit scores while Sky Blue worked on the disputes.

His tips were very practical, and I can tell you in retrospect that they were super effective as well.

Over the next couple of months I got letters from the credit bureaus listing the items that were deleted, and the late payments that were removed. I also joined MyFico.com to monitor my credit scores.

I knew I had made the right decision. There was no question in my mind from the start, but it was awesome to watch my credit scores go up!!!

Okay, here are the gritty details. When I started the Sky Blue Credit Repair program my scores were 520, 540, and 515. Pretty grim! Four months into the program they had removed 25 derogatory items. With their guidance I had opened 3 new small secured credit cards (they told me this was far better than buying those authorized user accounts in the long run). And my scores were 625, 640, and 655.

That's not the end of the story. I continued to manage my debt per their instructions, they continued the clean-up process, and my scores rose to 680, 695, and an unbelievable 715!

There is a lot of press about credit repair. Some is okay, and some is downright bad. Here is the truth. If it is done right it can change your life.

I found Sky Blue Credit Repair. They did the job right. You should not take my word for it. I suggest you call them on the phone. Talk to them about your credit. I expect that they will be as courteous and professional with you as they were with me.

Do you need credit repair? Pick up the phone. Call a few credit repair companies. Pick one that feels right to you. Want to do your own credit repair? Read a book (I suggest Best Credit by Dana Neal). But whatever you do, don't be put off by bad press that the "bad apples" in the credit repair business have caused. You can do it. Credit repair works!