Congress is now calling for an investigation of the Credit Bureaus.

by Alexandru Tanase Nov 22, 2022

Recently, Jim Clyburn, the chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, contacted Rohit Chopra via a letter. He asked that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau should review TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax. All business credit monitoring services were quite impressed since they were interested in the outcome and if the credit bureaus violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act.  

According to Clyburn, the credit bureaus are failing to manage and address the various credit issues reported by users, especially during the pandemic. What happened is that during the pandemic, credit bureaus had a much slower rate of eliminating errors or correcting them.

Any business credit service will tell you that, yes, during the pandemic, more and more people reported credit inaccuracies. Yet despite that, the credit bureaus needed to be faster at responding to these requests, which meant they didn't fulfill their promise in front of consumers and were required to follow the Fair Credit Reporting Act the way they should.

Why is this important?

Having the ability to dispute errors in your credit is very important since these issues can appear from time to time. It's an issue that even the best credit monitoring agency encounters very often. Business credit repair services in the USA are facing issues like this often. People started to realize that they could dispute any credit report information, and thus the number of inquiries is double compared to previous estimates.

For example, in 2021 alone, the three credit bureaus were estimated to have 8 million disputes in total, yet numbers show that Equifax alone ended up with 14 million credit disputes that year. Within 2019 and 2021, people disputed no less than 336 million inaccuracies in their credit reports. There were also complaints regarding the bureaus; in 2021, the CFPB received 619k complaints. It's easy to see why since business credit repair services know that 8 out of 10 reports have errors, it's important to dispute them and ensure all errors are corrected.

Investigating the credit bureaus

Good credit is essential because it shows you are financially accountable and can help you access better rates, among other benefits. However, a lack of accuracy in credit reports can damage a person's capabilities to achieve such goals, which can be very problematic. It’s crucial to take action and ensure that the credit bureaus handle all disputes properly.

Having the right approach when it comes to managing and solving credit disputes breaks the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and it also ends up negatively affecting people's lives. It's more critical than ever to ensure that people have a way to manage all these issues efficiently. Credit score checkups are needed when you use a business credit builder program USA. Either that or they want a business credit service. These are vital things to keep in mind, and that's why it makes a lot of sense to manage the situation and find the right solutions.

What did the Subcommittee find?

The Select Subcommittee acquired an investigation showing that credit bureaus are discarding a lot of disputes, millions of them, every year. But the main issue is that all of those still need to receive an investigation on the matter. They are just closed, thus sealing the fate of many people whose credit report is inaccurate. It becomes a lot harder for those persons to take a loan or improve their credit, all due to bad credit found within their reports.

The credit bureaus discarded around 13.8 million disputes between 2019 and 2021 alone. And yes, they tossed them without any investigation into the matter. It's easy to see why many people go to a business credit service in the USA or the best credit monitoring agency. They try to find adjacent solutions because the credit companies did not handle their disputes correctly, and they need to take action one way or another.

What do the credit bureaus say?

Unfortunately, these issues are happening daily, and things have accelerated quite a lot in the past few years. The credit bureaus stated that they discard any disputes without investigating when they think any unauthorized third parties are involved. However, that is only speculation from their side because you can't show any third-party involvement without evidence, and that's where issues tend to arise.

According to them, they discard disputes if they have multiple ones that use a similar language, if the envelopes they arrive in are the same, and so on. Equifax, in particular, states that they are not taking into account mail that comes from the same zip code and uses the same format or language. On the other hand, Experian is discarding disputes if the mail they receive has similar letter or envelope characteristics, the same font, ink color, and words. Even Transunion is tossing matching envelopes.

These things could be better because it takes time to control what font or envelope everyone uses. So you can easily have your request discarded due to random reasons. Many people choose business credit monitoring services to track and manage their credit because these credit disputes still need to be solved.

Why is this a problem? For starters, anyone who files such disputes has no control over similarities. On top of that, it feels like a stall tactic. It's a way not to allow consumers to repair their credit. The Select Subcommittee mentions that even if the bureaus don't have the mandate to handle illegitimate disputes, they are still against the Fair Credit Reporting Act upon discarding. That happens when either the consumer or a representative files those directly.

The situation shows Credit Bureaus are actively discarding millions of disputes inadequately, thus unfair to millions. And since people are not experts in credit reporting, they must use professional business credit repair services in the USA to tackle these problems. Even if some illegitimate requests are bound to happen, many are entirely legitimate. These bureaus are breaking people's rights, even if they find real issues within their credit reports.

These problems can become increasingly problematic in the long term since many issues are coming out very often. Each year the number of ignored credit issues is increasing substantially, and the actual numbers are not publicly available, clearly showing that an investigation into the credit bureaus is warranted.

Since Congress knows about this problem, we can expect that potential problems will receive a solution and that people with valid credit issues will receive the proper support and help they need. Credit score services are popular right now because they can help improve bad credit without relying on any credit report repairs.

Conclusion

Millions of cases documented by the CFPB and many other institutions show that consumers deal with a lot of stress and financial issues because these credit bureaus cannot tackle any legitimate errors in their credit reports. A person can lose access to employment, housing, and various loans due to the Bureaus discarding legitimate claims. It's great that Congress admits there is an issue, and hopefully, the next step is to handle that issue and ensure that Congress will tackle such problems in the long term with the right approach and commitment. We will keep you updated with any developments on the matter!