Consumer Reporting Agencies Make Changes To Their Dispute Systems

With the help of the CFPB consumer reporting agencies (Equifax, Experian & TransUnion) have made some small changes in the way they handle disputes. When a consumer finds incorrect or inaccurate information on their credit report they must dispute it with these agencies to get it removed, in the past these consumer reporting agencies would assign each dispute with a code.

This code would then be forwarded to the data furnisher who supplied the information (e.g a bank or credit card issuer) who would then have to respond to the dispute with evidence that the item is valid. This system is now changing slightly, consumers that submit additional documentation (e.g showing that a bill was paid on time when it’s being reported as late) will now automatically have this information sent onto the data furnisher as well.

Let’s take a look at the new & old system side by side.

This might not seem like a big change, but it does make things much easier for consumers. In the past they would’ve had to dispute the item with the consumer reporting agencies & the data furnisher that reported the incorrect information. This might not seem like a big issue, but it’s often difficult to find out information on who reported the negative item when debt has been sold to a third party debt collection agency.

This should make it much easier for consumers to deal directly with the consumer reporting agencies to fix errors on their credit report. Unfortunately it looks like this was done in response to the SECURE act in an effort to make it look like they can self regulate. This is a positive change but more still needs to be done to improve the accuracy of information found in consumer credit reports.