In January 2022, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a report on how Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion failed to appropriately respond to almost all of the 700,000 complaints filed against them between January 2020 and September 2021 concerning errors in credit reports.
The CFPB report details:
These failures indicate that the credit reporting agencies aren't meeting their legal obligations under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act. (15 U.S.C.A. § 1681i(e).)
What to Do If a Credit Reporting Agency Doesn't Respond to You
If a credit reporting bureau doesn't respond to your filed dispute or complaint with the CFPB, consider the following options.
- You could file another dispute with the credit reporting agency. Be sure to include some new information, so the agency doesn't dismiss your dispute as frivolous.
- Add an explanatory statement to the report. Once you file a statement with a credit reporting agency, the agency has to include the explanation, or a summary of it, in any report that has that information. If the agency helps you write the explanation, it may limit your statement to 100 words. Otherwise, the length isn't limited. But try to keep your comment to 100 words or less.
- Consider leaving the error on the report. If an error isn't hurting your credit score, causing you to be denied for credit, or is scheduled to fall off your credit report soon, you could consider just leaving it on the report.
- Contact a lawyer. If you've exhausted all other options for correcting your credit report, and the agency still won't fix a serious error, consider talking to a consumer law attorney or debt settlement lawyer who can help you enforce your rights. You have the right to sue a credit reporting that violates your rights under the FCRA, including continuing to report incorrect information.
Effective date: January 2022