Consumer Law

Reform Bill Addresses Problem of Inaccurate Credit Reports

By Kemnitzer, Anderson, Barron, Ogilvie & Brewer

An offical of the US Treasury Department has issued a statement pointing to the sections dealing with the problem of inaccurate credit reports and consumers' inability to easily get the inaccuracies removed.

The official notes that credit reports are sometimes riddled with errors. And those errors can have a real effect on your financial future. Something as simple as having the same name as another individual who failed to pay their bills on time can prevent you from receiving a loan or the lower interest rate for which you?re eligible.

The official states that consumers have filed almost 150,000 complaints about their credit reports in the last four years, and even conservative estimates suggest that 6 million Americans have errors on their reports serious enough to result in a denial of credit.

The Dodd-Frank financial reform bill seeks to empower consumers and address these issues through stronger oversight and regulation:

The new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that the Dodd-Frank bill creates would have authority to conduct regular examinations of large credit bureaus to evaluate their compliance with basic federal laws such as the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

Consumers will have the right to get their credit scores for free if they are turned down or charged a significantly higher price for credit than most other consumers because of their scores. This is on top of existing federal law that allows consumers to obtain their detailed consumer reports for free each year to check for inaccurate items and to purchase their credit scores at a reasonable price.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is required to perform a study and report to Congress on variations in the credit scores that are sold to creditors and to consumers by the three large national consumer reporting agencies to determine whether such variations disadvantage consumers.

Full post as published by California Credit Law Blog on July 07, 2010 (boomark / email).