Does This Give Your Credit a Boost?

A credit score is important, which is why so many people are looking for alternative ways to improve credit like boosting services. After all, these products claim to gather unconventional items — like on-time payments for streaming services — and use them to improve your score. But just like anything in life, there’s usually a catch. 

How Boosting Services Work

The credit boosting services offer to comb through your finances and find items that might improve your score. For example, you’d apply to a program and hand over your banking account information. The service would then search your transactions for items that could qualify as proof of your creditworthiness. It then gathers those transactions and sends them to the credit bureaus. Then your score goes up, right?

Too Good to Be True?

Many of these credit-boosting services sound too good to be true, right? Well, that’s because they are. The services claim that they might boost your score, with emphasis on the “might.” Some consumers have used the services and saw no improvements. Even if your score does go up, it can be by just a few points, which often doesn’t move the needle that much to lenders. 

The Catch

The catch with using credit-boosting services is not only that they might not do anything, but they can also cost you in two ways: fees for service and privacy. Some credit-boosting services charge fees for using them. Some, once they have access to your data, can then turn and sell it to advertisers. 

Do One Thing: Before signing up for a credit-boosting service, read the fine print. Often, these services aren’t worth your time or effort.