The Big Three
[CENTER]"The big credit bureaus and big business tolerate big mistakes in credit reports, but those mistakes ruin the financial reputations of hardworking Americans. … It is outrageous that inaccurate credit reports could damage 1 in 4 consumer's ability to buy a home, rent an apartment, obtain credit, open a bank account, or even get a job."[/CENTER]
[I]Ed Mierzwinski, U.S. PIRG Consumer Program Director.[/I]
Over the last ten years, the state PIRGs and other organizations have written many reports proving that the sloppy practices of the credit bureau are to be blamed for errors in the credit reports. U.S. PIRG collected 200 surveys from adults in 30 states who reviewed their credit reports for accuracy.
A survey released by [URL="http://www.uspirg.org"]U.S. PIRG[/URL] states that credit reports contains errors that are severe enough to cause consumers to be denied credit for a auto loan, an apartment, a home loan, and possibly even a job.
Key findings include:
* Twenty-five percent (25%) of the credit reports contained errors serious enough to result in the denial of credit
* Seventy-nine percent (79%) of the credit reports contained mistakes of some kind
* Fifty-four percent (54%) of the credit reports contained personal demographic identifying information that was misspelled, long-outdated, belonged to a stranger, or was otherwise incorrect
* Thirty percent (30%) of the credit reports contained credit accounts that had been closed by the consumer but incorrectly remained listed as open
[CENTER]"In the last five years the FTC has fined the Big Three credit bureaus millions of dollars for not helping consumers clean up inaccurate reports, yet recently allowed the credit bureaus to roll out the new right to a free credit report at a snail's pace," said Mierzwinski. "It's shocking that most of the country needs to wait until next year to get the important rights Congress promised them last year."[/CENTER]
[I]Ed Mierzwinski, U.S. PIRG Consumer Program Director.[/I]
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