Consumer agency receives most complaints about credit bureaus

Hundreds of thousands of Americans are assigning a failing grade to the companies that evaluate their creditworthiness.

A new report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau reveals that more than half the complaints the agency has received from the public from January 2020 to September 2021 were directed at Equifax, Experian or Transunion, the three largest credit reporting companies.

The complaints topped 700,000 during a period that largely overlapped with the coronavirus pandemic and the economic crisis it precipitated.

The CFPB said consumers focused their frustration on automated systems that made it difficult to correct faulty information in their reports, an exasperating dispute process and surprise debts such as medical bills reported to the companies without their knowledge. And the agency found that the credit bureaus provided significantly less help last year when consumers protested, offering relief in 2 percent of cases, down from 25 percent in 2019.

“America’s credit reporting oligopoly has little incentive to treat consumers fairly when their credit reports have errors,” CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said in a statement. “Today’s report is further evidence of the serious harms stemming from their faulty financial surveillance business model.”

Spokespeople for Equifax, Experian and Transunion did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The assessments the companies compile carry high stakes: Low scores can disqualify people from housing rentals, home mortgages and credit cards, as well as cause them to lose out on jobs. For borrowers, lower scores translate into higher interest rates and hence more costly loan payments.

Complaints to the CFPB about the companies more than doubled from 2019 to 2020, according to Consumer Reports. And more than a third of participants in a study by the publication last year found errors in their credit reports.

President Joe Biden campaigned on a pledge to establish a public credit reporting agency that would be housed within the CFPB — an idea originally generated by a joint task force of advisers to Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT. Congressional Republicans op- pose the plan.