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In 2018, Dovly started offering its one-of-a-kind credit improvement solution using an algorithm that fully automates the dispute process. The company is founded and led by immigrant women whose mission is to make credit repair more accessible to everyone.
Dovly’s service is a game-changer, but there are still a few downsides. We’ll examine the pros and cons of using Dovly and give you our honest take on it.
How Does Dovly Work?
DIY credit repair takes back and forth with credit bureaus, tracking responses, locating documentation, and checking your credit report. For some people, it starts to feel like a second job. The alternative is hiring a credit repair company at $50-$150 per month.
That’s not exactly accessible or affordable for many people. Dovly is a fully automated credit repair system that offers people the chance to repair their credit without the stress, time, money, and attention that other credit repair software requires.
Their service customizes your credit repair experience to your goals and credit report. Here’s the step-by-step on how they do it.
- Sign up for your account (Free, Ultimate, or Premium)
- Dovly does a soft inquiry to pull your credit report. This doesn’t hurt your credit score.
- Their algorithm scans your credit report for issues and lists them out one by one.
- You select each of the issues you want to process disputes for.
- Dovly sends disputes for each of the inaccurate items you selected. Then it logs each one and provides a status on the dispute as new information is received.
- Each month you get a credit report and credit score from TransUnion so you can watch your progress.
Since they do all the hard work of communicating with the credit bureaus, you can just sit back and watch the errors fall off while your credit score increases. Their product is meant to help a wide variety of credit situations. That includes:
- Late Payments
- Identity theft
- Errors and misinformation
- Debt from an ex-spouse
- Inaccurate names
Their service is mainly targeted toward people with errors in their credit reports. So it may not be effective for consumers who have bad credit due to accurate negative information.
Try DovlyFees and Plans
There are three different pricing plans with Dovly. Each one is meant to fit the specific goals you have and how aggressive you want to be in tackling your credit issues. It all starts with their free plan. If you find that you need something with a little more power, you can choose to upgrade.
Free
This plan gives you a taste of what Dovly is capable of. And it’s truly free. No credit card information is collected and you’re not locked into anything. However, the free plan is pretty limited compared to the other two.
It only files disputes with TransUnion and you only get one dispute each month. You also get your TransUnion credit report and credit score each month under this plan.
Also Read: How to Get an 800 Credit Score After Bankruptcy
While it’s a great starting point for your credit repair journey, you’ll need to involve Experian and Equifax if you’re serious about repairing bad credit.
Ultimate
This is a step up from their free plan and it’s still very affordable with annual billing of $99 which breaks down to $8.25 a month. The low price doesn’t mean a shortage of benefits either. With your $99 annual payment you get:
- Up to $1 million in identity theft protection
- Enhanced credit monitoring
- US-based customer support
- TransUnion credit reporting and scores
- $4.5k in annual savings and discounts through their partnerships
Currently, they’re also offering unlimited disputes with all three credit bureaus for one year under the Ultimate plan. This is perfect if you’re looking for an aggressive course of action to fix your credit.
Platinum
The Platinum plan has a monthly fee of $39.99 and claims to raise your score five times faster. Here’s what you get with your monthly fee.
- Three disputes a month with all three credit bureaus
- $1 million in identity theft insurance
- Enhanced credit monitoring
- US-based customer support
- $4.5k in annual savings and discounts through their partnerships
- TransUnion credit reporting and scores
This plan also comes with a 90-day money-back guarantee. So if you find it’s not working as well as you hoped, there’s no risk in trying it out for three months.
Pros:
Excellent Customer Reviews
One of the best ways to understand whether or not a company is good at what they do is through its customer reviews. Dovly has customers singing their praises on Yelp, The Credit Review, TrustPilot, and The Better Business Bureau.
At the time of this review, they had the following scores on each platform:
- Yelp: 4.5 out of 5
- BBB: 4.14 out of 5
- TrustPilot: 4.3 out of 5
- The Credit Review: 4.6 out of 5
Seeing a below-average review wasn’t common and even when it happened, their customer service team was on top of it. That says a lot about the way they run their business.
Fully Automated Process
There’s no other credit repair software on the market that disputes errors for you. Even some of the best credit repair software requires you to print and mail physical dispute letters to the credit bureaus and manually report the dispute status back to their system. Not exactly streamlined.
In contrast, Dovly does the disputing for you. You choose which negative items you want to dispute on your credit report and Dovly does the rest. No mailing. No manual tracking. They show you the status of each dispute and notify you of changes in your credit report.
Less Expensive
Working with a regular credit repair agency is costly. The setup fees alone can be up to $99, and you’ll also be paying $50 to $150 per month for some of the most popular credit repair services.
So if you choose to work with a credit repair company, you could be spending anywhere from $400 to $1,000 in the first six months. Depending on the state of your credit history, it may take longer than six months to fix the issues.
By using Dovly, you have the choice of fixing your credit for free. Even the paid versions are less expensive at $99 annually for the Ultimate plan or about $240 for six months of the Premium plan.
Easy Sign Up
Dovly makes it easy to get started repairing your credit. Their system integrates with Google and Apple so you don’t have to enter extra details that come with setting up a new account. You’ll enter some personal information like your name, address, SSN, and phone number.
Answer some security questions to confirm your identity. Then they ask about your credit goals and needs. From there they go straight into finding information on your credit report to dispute. From day one, you can take action on your credit issues.
Cons
Dovly Uses Vantage Score 3.0, Not FICO
From our recent article, Credit Karma vs. Experian we know that 90% of lenders use FICO scores to make their lending decisions. Making Dovly’s use of Vantage Score 3.0 a big disadvantage.
Vantage Score 3.0 is considered an educational credit score. So it will give you a general idea of where you stand, but it’s not the score that potential lenders see. The differences between those two types of scores can be significant because they’re calculated differently.
If your goal is to improve your credit to buy a home, apply for credit, or get a new car, you may want to pair Dovly with another service that works with FICO.
Limited Monthly Disputes
A common disappointment that’s brought up in many of the negative reviews is the limit on the number of disputes even for customers with premium paid subscriptions. Dovly Limits its premium customers to three disputes per month with all three credit bureaus.
Customers with the free version only get one dispute per month and it’s only with Transunion. So to have any effective headway in improving your credit score, you’ll likely need to upgrade to their Ultimate or Premium plans.
For customers with a hefty number of negative items to dispute, this might not seem like nearly enough.
What’s Dovly’s reasoning? They’ve done their research. With their algorithm, they found that sending three disputes per month is the sweet spot for achieving the best results.
With a limited number of disputes per month, your credit repair process might take longer than you originally expected.
The Premium Version Isn’t Available In All States
The free version of Dovly is accessible in all 50 States and the District of Columbia. But as we discussed earlier, the premium version is necessary if you want to dispute errors with credit bureaus other than Transunion.
If you need a version with more power then unfortunately you won’t have access if you live in Georgia or Minnesota.
How Long Does Dovly Take To Dispute?
We mentioned before that 92% of Dovly members see credit score improvements in less than six months. Some members have reported seeing improvements within the first 30 days of using it.
Since Dovly lets you start disputing on day one, it might not take long to see progress on your disputes compared to working with a credit repair company.
How Much Will Dovly Help Me Improve My Score?
On average, Dovly has helped their clients improve their credit scores by an average of 56 points within six months or less. Some of their clients have even reported seeing improvements in their scores in as little as 30 days.
Try DovlyOur Verdict
Overall, Dovly is a credit fixing solution that has the potential to revolutionize the credit repair industry. They’ve introduced ease into the complex process of repairing credit.
Whether you’re looking to achieve financial freedom, pay down debt, or bring your credit score up to qualify for big-ticket purchases Dovly is probably able to help you out.
Yes, they use a different credit scoring model than most lenders. And you’re out of luck if you want their paid services in Georgia or Minnesota. On the plus side, their customers absolutely love them because of how much Dovly has changed their lives and their credit scores.
Also Read:
- Best Credit Repair Companies in Las Vegas, NV
- Credit Repair Companies in El Paso, Texas
- Do Credit Repair Companies Work?
- How Many Points Will My Credit Score Increase if a Collection is Deleted?
- Can You Have a 700 Credit Score with Collections?
- Writing a Sample Letter to Remove Repossession From Credit Report
- How To Fix Credit After a Car Repossession
Seychelle is a Maryland-based personal finance writer and business owner. She’s passionate about helping others out of financial pitfalls she’s already dug herself out of. Most of her finance knowledge stems from her career as a Financial Consultant and Branch Manager at the 7th largest US bank. Read more of her work on credit, budgeting, debt consolidation, and entrepreneurship at www.seychellewrites.com