Are CRAs (EFX, EXP, TU) *LEGALLY* obligated to keep and maintain your credit report? Where's the law specifically stating this? I'm getting sick and tired of the run-around with TransUnion. Given a choice, I, as the consumer, would make a written request for TU to completely withold my credit report from any requesting party except myself. My thinking is since we have 3 fairly large private companies, what on earth forces us to use ALL of them? Their data is valuable, that means our reports. If they do not choose to employ proper procedures to verify the accuracy of the reports, then we should have the right to revoke their privilege of using our reports. It's our private data, not theirs.
I'm serious here. Is there anything legally forcing the CRAs to keep my records? These 3 major CRAs are supposed to give us a choice in who to use to pull our credit report from. Well what about the choice on which CRA to use exclusively for our reporting purposes?
NO. But there is nothing legally forcing them not to, and they make money by doing so. It is like the Talking Heads tune: "Space people WILL one day visit us....but only if they can make money doing so." If you could take away their financial incentive to keep records on you and your financial history, then you could stop them, until then I am afraid we are all stuck. -Peace, Dave
When you get credit, the terms usually state "by doing business with us, you allow us to report and obtain info from the CRA's" I think you're on to something, but how to do it, I dont know