Posted on May - 16 - 2011
Credit Bureaus Give V.I.P.’s Get Special Treatment
Experian, Equifax and Trans Union maintain lists of V.I.P.’s like politicians, judges and other influential people who get special help from employees here in the U.S. in fixing mistakes on their credit reports. Everyone else is herded into a largely automated system under which an employee spends about two minutes reading the dispute after which the dispute is categorized using a two or three digit code. The coded dispute is sent to the source of the inaccuracy, which may be a credit card company or debt collector.
A front page story by Tara Siegel Bernard in today’s NY Times contrasts the V.I.P. treatment with the slipshod methods used to handle others’ disputes. The story quotes Ms Chi Chi Wu of the National Consumer Law Center for an important point–when it comes to credit reporting, consumers cannot vote with their feet. They and we are all forced to do business with the three national credit bureaus.
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