Credit Error? It Pays to Be on V.I.P. List

[n2doc]

By TARA SIEGEL BERNARD
Published: May 14, 2011

The credit rating bureaus, whose reports influence everything from credit cards to mortgages to job offers, have a two-tiered system for resolving errors — one for the rich, the well-connected, the well-known and the powerful, and the other for everyone else.

The three major agencies, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, keep a V.I.P. list of sorts, according to consumer lawyers and legal documents, consisting of celebrities, politicians, judges and other influential people. Those on the list — and they may not even realize they are on it — get special help from workers in the United States in fixing mistakes on their credit reports. Any errors are usually corrected immediately, one lawyer said.

For everyone else, disputes are herded into a largely automated system. Their complaints are often electronically ferried to a subcontractor overseas, where a worker spends, on average, about two minutes figuring out the gist of the matter, boiling it down to a one-to-three-digit computer code that signifies the problem — “account not his/hers,” for example — and sending a dispute form to the creditor to investigate. Many times, consumer advocates say, the investigation translates to a perfunctory check of its records.

“The legal responsibility of the credit reporting agencies and of the creditors is well established,” said Leonard Bennett, a consumer lawyer in Newport News, Va. “There is a requirement that they do meaningful research and analysis, and it is almost never done.”

more
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/your-money/credit-scores/15credit.html

[Curmudgeoness]

1. “They work for the lenders ...

who buy credit reports from them, and anyone who suggests otherwise is not being intellectually honest.”

“There is no neutrality in the credit reporting agencies,” said John Ulzheimer, who has been an expert witness in more than 80 credit-related cases and is president of consumer education at SmartCredit.com.



This is the crux of the problem. As the "little people", we have no power to do anything about it. We don't count, and an error on our little report is of no significance to these credit reporting companies. Heads, they win, tails, you lose.

The one thing I came away from this article with is that if you have a dispute, make a statement that is short and sweet. They only have about 2 minutes to read it and categorize it. Don't send a ten page dissertation.

[flamin lib]

2. Hey, they think I'm dead. How easy is it fix that? "I can't be talking to you, you're dead." nt

[xchrom]

3. Sounds just like the legal system. Imagine that? Nt

[izquierdista]

4. And the new internet

once net neutrality is a thing of the past.