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Time to Quell Excessive Power of Credit Bureaus, Sometimes Ruling Life or Death

Wednesday 25 November 2009

by: Peter Stern, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

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(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: ground*floor, Your Pal Dave)

During the past several decades in the US, three credit bureaus have become so powerful, they can make or break American lives.

They are Equifax, Experian and Trans Union. Any one of them has the capability to cause many sleepless nights of worry for American citizens, and on many levels their power and control rival that exerted by the dreaded IRS.

While it may take only minutes for any company extending credit to provide the bureaus with negative financial information or comments on a person that can stay on an individual's credit report for up to 10 years, it may take years for an individual to get incorrect negative documentation corrected and/or removed.

The God-like power wielded by "the big 3" was recently brought to light when a woman was deemed an unacceptable applicant for a residential mortgage because the bureaus classified her as dead. Based on misinformation provided by the credit bureaus, she was refused a mortgage.

The power currently exercised by the credit bureaus may also determine whether a prospective employer will hire you since credit reports may be used to prescreen job applicants. Why should a person's reported financial status determine whether he or she is eligible to be hired for a job? The purported state of a person's finances should not eliminate the chances of a prospective employee.

It is absurd and unconscionable that entities with such little oversight should have such immense power over the lives of American citizens, and it is time to diminish the extent of that power in the best interests and personal rights of American citizens.
 

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Peter Stern, a former director of information services, university professor and public school administrator, is a disabled Vietnam veteran who lives in Driftwood, Texas.

Comments

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Absolutely right. Another

 Wed, 11/25/2009 - 16:20 β€” Anonymous (not verified)
Absolutely right. Another bad feature is the use of the social security number to access these reports. This needs to be illegal. Sure, the credit bureaus will moan; the hell with them.

People often forget that

 Wed, 11/25/2009 - 16:34 β€” Anonymous (not verified)
People often forget that systems of credit reporting are optional. Banks have no real obligation to use credit reports as anything other than advisory. If they chose to give a loan in this situation, they would be in the right.

THANK YOU.

 Wed, 11/25/2009 - 16:37 β€” Anonarcmous (not verified)
THANK YOU.

Much of what gets put on a

 Wed, 11/25/2009 - 22:35 β€” Anonymous (not verified)
Much of what gets put on a credit report is erroneous. I've been reading about this and everything is stacked against the consumer. We always being told we need to check our credit reports and then I find an article saying if you regularly check your credit report, this can count against you and actually lower your credit rating. I think they need to be severely reigned in; no one should be denied a job because of something on their report, which has a good chance of being in error.

A business, allegedly

 Wed, 11/25/2009 - 22:57 β€” Jade Queen (not verified)
A business, allegedly for-profit or -non, is only as good as the people who work there. I am happy with the credit union I am with now, but I know to check Bankrate.com now and then. National and international conglomerates are probably too big to know enough for good service in a particular place. It's perplexing times. If people know you, maybe they are more likely to believe you are alive, if you are in front of their faces.

I have had so many errors on

 Thu, 11/26/2009 - 04:02 β€” Anonymous (not verified)
I have had so many errors on my reports, and doing anything with these monsters is next to impossible. Things are still not straightened out. Simply put American people are being held under the heavy thumb of the banking/tax/credit system that keeps us all slaves/prisoners. It is next to impossible to live outside it in this country. It is a type of Fascism

The last time I got a credit

 Thu, 11/26/2009 - 04:15 β€” Regina (not verified)
The last time I got a credit report it listed credit cards in my name for stores that had gone out of business years before (and the cards cut up and dumped). Their staffs are sloppy as all getout -- yet they regard their records as the inerrant word of God.

Jade Queen: We're not

 Thu, 11/26/2009 - 04:52 β€” Anonymous (not verified)
Jade Queen: We're not speaking about credit unions. The op-ed is about credit bureaus. Big difference.

My boyfriend used to work

 Thu, 11/26/2009 - 06:06 β€” Anonymous (not verified)
My boyfriend used to work for TransUnion. He said that TransUnion did not care if they received bad or false informaiton; they kept and published it all. I have information on my credit report that belongs to ex-boyfriends (simply because the lived at my address) and, since my last name is Smith, I have many other Smiths' bad credit information on my reports. I gave up.

Note to creative hacker

 Thu, 11/26/2009 - 18:58 β€” Floresta (not verified)
Note to creative hacker types; please disable these rotton behemoths ability to wreck our lives.

Hey, American Express told

 Fri, 11/27/2009 - 08:30 β€” Anonymous (not verified)
Hey, American Express told me I was dead, too! We had gotten an extra card on my account for my new spouse's mother, who was a widow. She died about a year later. AMEX not only listed her as dead, they listed me as dead, too. I was a bit surprised to be told I was dead.

It it always prudent to buy

 Fri, 11/27/2009 - 15:04 β€” Anonymous (not verified)
It it always prudent to buy a big ticket item with cash. Folks used to buy hotels this way, but it's hardly realistic today to expect most people to have that much cash for a car or a condo. Credit bureaus are not set up as non-profits, they are frequently used as an adjunct to loan sharking, predatory lending and usury. They had a key role in the housing bubble, a mission that appears on the surface to be contradictory to their original mission. But in the USA, usury is credit! War is Peace!

When will there be an

 Fri, 11/27/2009 - 20:38 β€” Anonymous (not verified)
When will there be an equivelant of HIPPA? The sloppiness and lack of efficiency in these agencies resulted in my x having most of my credit history to share with his wife! My financial status feels as, if not more, private than medical info. Who polices them and who pays them?

When banks raised interest

 Fri, 11/27/2009 - 20:43 β€” Anonymous (not verified)
When banks raised interest rates, I opted out and that choice lowered my credit score. Banks benefit from low scores giving them "reason" for charging higher interest. I think we are being screwed twice! Charge higher interest, lower score, higher interest...who pays them???? Who owns them?????

I feel safer from

 Mon, 11/30/2009 - 01:10 β€” Jade Queen (not verified)
I feel safer from credit-reporting-bureau issues by using a credit union for my banking. A second issue I wanted to raise is being known by the people that you do business with. The credit-reporting bureaus are huge corporations with issues such as employee-turnover and new employees' mistakes. The banks have these issues as well. It isn't always true that credit unions are different, but it is something to try. A local bank could be good, but checking Bankrate.com would still be advised, for any banking choice one makes, because nice tellers may not have much to do with whether the bank is going to make it. It's inconvenient if they get taken over.