42 KIPLINGER’S PERSONAL FINANCE^ 10/2019MONEY
ing credit scores and data for busi-
nesses. That doesn’t allow for much nu-
ance in what may be a complex dispute.
Although you can go to court when
a dispute fails and may win compen-
sation and a cleaned-up credit record,
such cases aren’t much of a threat to
the bureaus. “Rather than changing
their business practices to be fairer to
consumers, they pay go-away money
in very small lawsuits. They can afford
it as a cost of doing business,” says Ed
Mierzwinski, consumer advocate for
U.S. PIRG. Even Equifax’s recent set-
tlement of up to $700 million for its
2017 data breach is “a mere parking
ticket,” he says. (For more on theH
ave you ever found your-
self fuming at the credit
bureaus? You have plenty
of company. Among com-
panies in the Consumer
Financial Protection Bureau’s data-
base, the three major credit-reporting
bureaus—Equifax, Experian and
Trans Union—have logged the most
complaints for four years running,
according to a report from the U.S.
Public Interest Research Group.
Most of the complaints involve
hassles remedying inaccurate informa-
tion on credit reports. But some are
from consumers who find themselves
caught in a tangle of red tape or facing
an impenetrable wall of indifference.
Each year, Margaret Finelt, of Rich-
mond, Texas, gets her free credit
reports at AnnualCreditReport.com.
At the site, you are directed to each
of the three bureaus. But for the past
couple of years, although she’s had
no problem claiming her reports from
TransUnion and Experian, she’s been
unable to obtain her Equifax report.
On the phone, Equifax representa-
tives have given her a number of pos-
sible reasons: that her credit report
is frozen (a freeze prevents lenders
from seeing the report in response to
a request for new credit in her name),
that she failed to correctly answer a
security question, or that AnnualCredit
Report.com was having a technical
issue. Margaret’s husband, Daniel, has
since frozen his credit reports—and
now he can’t obtain his Equifax report
online. By law, a freeze doesn’t prevent
you from getting your free annual credit
report. In a statement to Kiplinger’s,
Equifax confirmed that a credit report
is available via the “online, phone or
mail channel even if you have a secu-
rity freeze.” The Finelts finally man-
aged to get their Equifax reports by
calling customer service and verbally
answering security questions.
It’s hard to say why the Finelts can’t
get their Equifax reports online, but
their experience illustrates the every-
day difficulties that consumers have
with the credit bureaus: receivingscattered or faulty information from
agents and encountering roadblocks
in processes they expect to be simple.
“With Equifax, I dread trying to get
anything,” says Margaret.
In a battle of you versus the credit
bureaus, the bureaus have most of the
power—and Congress has been reluc-
tant to regulate them. It took Equifax’s
massive data breach two years ago to
get the attention of lawmakers. That
led to the legislation that allows you
to freeze your reports for free but
provides few other new protections
involving the credit bureaus.
Over the past decade, regulators and
the attorneys general of several states
have managed to enact a few reforms
in an effort to improve credit-report
accuracy and secure better treatment
for consumers. For example, when a
bureau confirms that a consumer’s
credit-report data is mixed with that
of another person, it must inform the
other bureaus. Your credit reports
may no longer include debt that did
not arise from a contract or agreement
(such as a parking ticket or library
fine) or medical debts that are less
than 180 days old. Plus, the bureaus
must remove medical debts from
credit reports after they’ve been paid
by an insurer. The CFPB has directed
the bureaus to conduct their own
reviews of consumer disputes and
documentation—rather than simply
passing the buck to the data provider
and “parroting” its response back to
the consumer—and data providers
should have systems capable of receiv-
ing consumer-dispute information.
But problems persist, according to
a National Consumer Law Center
report, “and we fear the needle on the
speedometer for reform is stuck on
slow.” Plus, some of the permitted
practices do consumers no favors. For
example, the bureaus convert disputes
into two- or three-digit codes to sum-
marize complaints for data furnishers.
The process mostly involves “comput-
ers talking to computers,” says Gerri
Detweiler, credit expert and education
director for Nav.com, a website offer-KipTipYOUR RIGHT
TO A FREE
REPORT
It pays to know when you’re entitled to
a free credit report besides those avail-
able yearly at AnnualCreditReport.com.
After Daniel Finelt of Richmond, Texas,
experienced identity theft, an Equifax
agent told his wife, Margaret, that he
couldn’t get a free report because he
had claimed his annual report a month
earlier. But because Daniel had placed
on his reports an initial fraud alert—
which signals to lenders that they
should verify a consumer’s identity be-
fore granting credit—the law allows him
an extra free report. You also get a free
report if your file contains inaccurate in-
formation because of fraud, if an ad-
verse action has been taken against you
because of information in the report, if
you’re unemployed and expect to apply
for employment in the next 60 days,
or if you receive public assistance. For
seven years starting in 2020, Equifax
will provide all U.S. consumers six free
additional copies of their credit report
per year, too.