It is therefore surprising that the push to reform credit bureaus only seems to come from consumer advocates, Salinger said. "I would expect the credit bureaus' customers -- business users -- to want that information to be as accurate as possible."
Clearly, mistakes affecting consumers have a greater impact. A person could be required to pay a much higher interest rate for a car loan, or tens of thousands of dollars more for a mortgage, or be shut out of the lending market altogether.
Auto insurers also routinely use credit scores in developing their pricing methodologies, Salinger said.Previously, Matt's bumped in to the same issue, which was featured on Marketplace.
Here's the FTC's page on how to fix errors on your credit report.
About 6 percent of nearly 21,500 consumers who complained to the Federal Trade Commission during a 30-month period beginning in 2009, and nearly 8 percent of 1,842 who complained to state attorneys general in 2009 and 2010, said that their credit reports had been mixed with another person’s.Consider that few people complain to the FTC or the AG in these cases. At work, I never encountered a case of a blended file where a complaint was made to the FTC or the AG, but I can count a handfull of cases where someone hired a lawyer to threaten the CRAs and the data furnishers on the reports with suits under the FCRA. Most of these are settled without suit being filed, but they are huge messes that take years to resolve. I saw many more cases of blended files that the consumers weren't even trying to resolve. Most of these were cases of close family members, but not always.
With respect to the FCRA's requirement that CRAs forward to the furnisher "all relevant information," it appears that CRAs generally do not convey to furnishers documents that some consumers give CRAs in connection with their disputes. By itself, however, this does not mean that CRAs fail to convey "all relevant information" to furnishers. It is unclear how often consumers submit documents along with their disputes, or how often these documents contain relevant information. When consumers do submit documents, the CRAs summarize the information in a numeric code supplemented, in some instances, by a narrative in a free-form field. Although this process may be sufficient in most cases to resolve the dispute properly, in certain situations, the failure to convey the actual documents may lead to incorrect outcomes. The information that the FTC and the Board have obtained on this subject is inconclusive as to the prevalence of this result.Read that over a few times; savor it like you would a fine brandy or port.
"I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organisations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms," said Greenspan.posted by funkiwan at 2:18 PM on February 13 [1 favorite]
I'll start today with financial education. The CFPB would like your comments on “effective financial education approaches that create opportunities for consumers to improve their financial decision making capabilities.” I thought I had blown up this myth already. And others keep proving me right. If you were at this past year’s Boulder Summer Conference on Consumer Financial Decision Making you know that a soon-to-be released exhaustive meta-analysis of past studies demonstrates that financial education does not produce better financial outcomes, and another study using a much larger dataset and a more robust set of controls than past work finds that financial literacy does not lead to improved financial outcomes.posted by the man of twists and turns at 5:54 AM on February 14 [3 favorites]
(e) Limitation of liability
Except as provided in sections 1681n and 1681o of this title, no consumer may bring any action or proceeding in the nature of defamation, invasion of privacy, or negligence with respect to the reporting of information against any consumer reporting agency, any user of information, or any person who furnishes information to a consumer reporting agency, based on information disclosed pursuant to section 1681g, 1681h, or 1681m of this title, or based on information disclosed by a user of a consumer report to or for a consumer against whom the user has taken adverse action, based in whole or in part on the report [2] except as to false information furnished with malice or willful intent to injure such consumer.« Older False memories of fabricated political events [ABS... | The Boredom Proneness Scale† i... Newer »
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posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:04 AM on February 13 [3 favorites]