If Equifax, TransUnion and Experian make you mad, you have plenty of company. The latest monthly report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) put the three major credit reporting agencies at the top of the list of most complained-about companies.
These for-profit companies compile and keep track of how you pay your bills, whether you pay on time, pay late or miss payments. The CFPB report doesn’t spell out what they did, or failed to do, to rack up the most complaints from August through December 2016. But we do know that many complain that they have to fight to get the agencies to correct errors on their credit reports
In the New York metro area, including New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut, JP Morgan Chase made the top three along with Experian and Equifax.
ConsumerMojo asked the individual credit reporting bureaus for comment and they referred us to the Consumer Data Industry Association. A spokesman criticized the publication of the data as unfair.
In an email, Norm Magnuson, Vice President of Public Affairs, told us, “…when consumers read a report about complaints they assume that the complaint has been verified and it means there’s been a failure to comply with law or to otherwise work with the consumer. That isn’t the case with the CFPB’s monthly complaint reports.”
And in a letter to CFPB Director Richard Cordray, the CDIA’s President and CEO Stuart Pratt asked the bureau to postpone publication of the monthly report until it analyzes the data.
He said that in some instances the credit reporting agencies did not receive and verify the complaints. In other cases, people complained about the credit reporting agencies when they should have complained about another company. And he said that the CFPB process for soliciting complaints may confuse consumers about where they should file a complaint.
Nevertheless, we know that many have legitimate complaints about the credit reporting bureaus and those complaints often take a long time to get resolved.
If you have had trouble getting your credit report online
Here’s why.
