Furthering comments I made yesterday involving changes in the credit industry. Some interesting votes took place in California State Senate last month regarding SB 1607 known as "Consumers' Right to Know" The bill passed overwhemingly both times and as it stands in California Require lenders to provide consumers with their specific credit score, what credit information went into making up the score, and an explanation of how credit scores work in the loan approval process; The CRA's will be in even more of rush to put out their versions' of credit scores (their already counting the profits) while Fair Isaac remains arrogant, secretive and intractable, say goodby FICO. Compel credit reporting agencies to correct inaccurate information in a timely manner; AHAHHAHHAAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA I see nooooooooo changes Provide additional legal recourse to consumers when credit reporting agencies continue to report inaccurate information after acknowledging that the information is incorrect. Most interesting, I will be eagerly anticipating further information as regards this provision. For those who think the tide is turning, remember this is one state, and the most liberal, consumer oriented one at that. While it is conceivable that similar laws may be passed in other liberal states such as Massachutes, New England, New York and especially Wisconson, it will find tough going in many others particulary Florida, Texas, Delaware.
This is actually quite interesting. Sorry I passed over this message for a couple of days. How about the issue of responsibility for CRAs? Will they still be viewed as passive transmitters of information submitted by others, or as publishers of information with a legal duty to check out the reports they sell?
I feel that since their credit scores will be made up by the information in a persons' credit file their 'should' be far more pressure on them to make certain the information is accurate. Of course this conflicts greatly with their usual policy of reporting any information provided by any source as long as they are a paying subscriber. The same information that they sell far and wide so that this incorrect information makes its way into virtually untold amounts of databases and which does nothing but harm the individual who has no recourse. Taking both into consideration I feel the GREEDY CRA'S will continue to 'care less' but this time find themselves the receipient of many more class action suits brought upon by individuals who were materially damaged because of false/frudulent negative information that went unchecked and made up their credit score. Such credit scores that will be placed in much higher esteem when Fair Isaac falls out of the picture. I have no doubt it will take at least several losses resulting in losses of tens of millions of dollars before the regulatory bodies step and basically force them the change their 'wicked ways'. Actually for all the faults of the CRA's (of which there are plenty) the problem resides with the credit furnishers themselves. Everything from mistakes to bad bookkeeping to outright fraud on many collection agencies part to vendettas on the part of individuals who work in in-house collection agencies for some of the biggest banks (BOA, Chase, Discover). You see the CRA's are limited to the extent that while if provided information that directly contradicts the credit furnisher will in all likelyhood correct or remove the account in question but this is only temporarily as this information will be re-inputted when the credit furnisher sends in the updated tapes. About the only recourse an individual would have then would be to sue the credit furnisher/collection agency to force them to remove the incorrect/fraudulent information. Actually, I would love to see a class action suit against a CRA by a number of individuals who have defeated some scum sucking collection agencie and yet even after being notified of this said CRA still GREEDILY and with total willful neglect keeps reporting this collection agencies most likely fraudulent entries. MBA, taked about doing so as I wonder what has become of that?
