Articles Posted in Credit Report Errors

I read an interesting article that I agreed with in many respects by John Matarese of Channel 5 News in Florida. My one point of disagreement is that there is another solution — read below.

First, here are some interesting quotes from this excellent article:

“You will hear that’s easy to do, to simply write a dispute letter,” an exasperated Gayle Collier said.

Certegy is a company we have dealt with before — we have not been impressed with their business practices. They just agreed to a massive fine — 3.5 million dollars for violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).

Certegy Check Services, Inc., one of the nation’s largest check authorization service companies, has agreed to pay $3.5 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).

Certegy, based in St. Petersburg, Florida, is a consumer reporting agency (CRA) that compiles consumers’ personal information and uses it to help retail merchants throughout the United States determine whether to accept consumers’ checks. Under the FCRA, consumers whose checks are denied based on information Certegy provides the merchant, have the right to dispute that information and have Certegy correct any inaccuracies.

Justin Baxter from Oregon obtained a remarkable verdict (18 million) for his client in a lawsuit against Equifax.

The jury was told she contacted Equifax eight times between 2009 and 2011 in an effort to correct inaccuracies, including erroneous accounts and collection attempts, as well as a wrong Social Security number and birthday. Her lawsuit alleged the Atlanta-based company failed to correct the mistakes.

While the verdict may be reduced as the punitive damage portion was many multiples of the compensatory portion the verdict should still be very significant and it sends a message that credit reports are important and juries do not like to see credit report errors that the credit bureaus refuse to fix.