70% "believed" something was inaccurate. Not "found" something inaccurate, but "believed" there MIGHT be something inaccurate. Umm ... OK. You are correct on your second point - everyone should review their credit histories on a regular basis.
There are plenty of errors, especially when you give entries a search for IMPLIED errors. Again, a debt with a total balance of $26k looking like it has a total balance of $.96 MILLION is a substantial IMPLIED error. Implied errors were ignored in the FTC study, because those are the errors that typically need to be fought out in court to "resolve" because even when you dispute them, they don't see that 36 payments of FULL BALANCE = FULL BALANCE * 36
Keep grasping for straws. The 70% wasn't in reference to "implied errors". It was individual people "believing" something they had no proof of ... sort of like how little kids "believe" in the tooth fairy. Not worth it, man, really.
The FTC did the study, and the BELIEFS needed to be LEGITIMATE, like the fact that the Federal Government couldn't deny that they were reporting my 26k in student loans to look as if they were actually .96 MILLION...
70% of "a bunch of people" believed they still had inaccurate information, not 70% of the FTC. Your words, not mine. Now if the FTC found that 70% of the people still had inaccurate information (i.e., by actually finding the inaccurate information), THAT would mean something.
One thing I found interesting when reading the FTC's follow-up study was that they went back to people who still had pending disputes when the 2012 study ended. Then, years later, 70% said they still "believed" their report contained errors and 40% who said they lost disputes said they never received an explanation of the credit bureau's decision. And half of the 70% said they were just going to abandon their disputes because they didn't have time to deal with it anymore. What this tells me is that the systems the CRAs have set up often fail the consumer. They serve the data furnishers pretty well though, and that is who the CRAs really care about anyway. I have great credit and check my credit reports every few months. I've found errors several times, have disputed them, and have experienced my disputes just vanishing into the abyss. Based upon the FTC's study, it looks like I'm not the only one, and many people just give up because they don't have the time to deal with it.
I would expect the CRAs to serve the creditors. After all, the creditors are the ones who subscribe and pay for the vast majority of CRAs services offered. And the last time I checked, people aren't REQUIRED to borrow money - they do it by CHOICE. Choices have consequences. When I originally started my repair journey (nearly 20 years ago), there was not a single INACCURATE item on my reports. All the charge offs, collections and every other derog that was on my report was ACCURATE. I didn't LIKE that they were on there, but that doesn't make them inaccurate. Lots of people just like to play games, inundate the CRAs with elevendy billion disputes in hopes that one drops through the cracks. Hey, if that's what helps them sleep at night, more power to them. It's not like the costs for the CRA to do business with creditors won't increase nor those costs be passed on to the creditors nor those costs be passed on to GOOD customers of the creditors, right? *sigh* People with GOOD credit call negative trade lines "negative trade lines". In many cases (not all, but many), people with BAD credit call negative trade lines "inaccuracies" that need to be disputed and *maybe* they'll get deleted. But, I digress. Anyway ... through the 4-5 years it took to get "clean" (paying off, aging out, making deals to delete for payment) and then in the past ~15 years that I've remained clean, I've monitored my histories religiously and I can honestly say that I never once found INACCURATE information on my files. Never. Then again, I'm a big fan of personal responsibility and accountability and I accepted the fact that I screwed up. So I paid the price (couldn't buy a hot dog on credit for a long time), paid off my debts and eventually was able to get clean. I'm not saying that inaccuracies don't happen - they do. But if I can make it nearly 2 DECADES without a single inaccuracy, I'm not buying that 70% figure. IMHO, that's little more than people with bad credit whining because they screwed up and refuse to take responsibility for their own actions. As for people "giving up" -- that's their decision. I kept at it until I got the answers I needed. I didn't always LIKE them, but I got them.
Huge kudos to you John for cleaning up your credit and keeping it that way ever since! I'm sure you learned many things along the way and can serve as a great support for those coming here to find some guidance with their credit reports and credit scores. I hope you'll stick around It's good to hear that you've never found an inaccuracy on your credit reports in 20 years too. That proves the CRAs can and do get it right! Not everyone is so lucky, including myself.
