“Equifax put profits over privacy and greed over people, and must be held accountable to the millions of people they put at risk,” said Attorney General Letitia James of New York, who helped lead the states’ investigation. “This company’s ineptitude, negligence and lax security standards endangered the identities of half the U.S. population.”
Latest settlement covers retail sales practices and auto-loan, mortgage charges
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a new rule Monday that prevents companies from using arbitration clauses to stop consumers from bringing class action lawsuits.
The clauses force people to “go it alone or give up,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray. “Our new rule will stop companies from sidestepping the courts and ensure that people who are harmed together can take action together,” he said. Many people aren’t aware that their bank account or credit card contracts came with an arbitration clause buried in the fine print.
But they’re pretty common. Credit card issuers representing more than half of all credit card debt, and banks representing 44% of insured deposits use mandatory arbitration clauses, according to a CFPB report issued in 2015.
http://money.cnn.com/2017/07/10/pf/cfpb-ban-arbitration-banks-credit-card/index.html?iid=SF_LN
This is part three of a four-part series that looks at how inaccurate credit reporting is being fought by a attorneys, the CFPB, and state AGs. You may read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
Class Action Lawsuit Results in Record Penalty Against Transunion: Last week, a jury found the Big 3 credit bureau Transunion guilty of violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act and harming a class of over 8,000 consumers. The jury imposed statutory damages and additional punitive damages, due to the willful nature of the violation, totaling $60 Million. Transunion mixed the names of ordinary consumers up with those of terrorists and drug traffickers with similar names on the U.S. Treasury Department’s very-scary-to-be-on Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) database. It allegedly failed to adequately match birthdates or Social Security Numbers. And, it had been caught doing the same thing years before. In its failed defense, Transunion claimed the consumers did not suffer financial harm, so let it go. But privacy laws protect you from reputational harms as well; your good name has real value and loss of your good name has a real cost. The authoritative National Consumer Law Center also points out that the case points to the need to protect the use of class action remedies, which have long been under attack.
This is part two of a four-part series that looks at how inaccurate credit reporting is being fought by a attorneys, the CFPB, and state AGs. You may read Part 1 here.
On July 1, thanks to the efforts of a bi-partisan, multi-state enforcement effort by 31 state Attorneys-General, 12 million consumers will see their credit scores increase by up to 20 points; 700,000 of them will see increases of as much as 40 points as certain negative public records, including tax liens and court judgements, drop off their credit reports.
This is due to the fact that the bureaus (Experian, Equifax and Transunion) have often failed to adequately match the often-scant court records with the full name and Social Security Number of the consumer to meet the Fair Credit Reporting Act’s “maximum possible accuracy” standard.
This is part two of a four-part series that looks at how inaccurate credit reporting is being fought by a attorneys, the CFPB, and state AGs. You may read Part 1 here.
On July 1, thanks to the efforts of a bi-partisan, multi-state enforcement effort by 31 state Attorneys-General, 12 million consumers will see their credit scores increase by up to 20 points; 700,000 of them will see increases of as much as 40 points as certain negative public records, including tax liens and court judgements, drop off their credit reports.
This is due to the fact that the bureaus (Experian, Equifax and Transunion) have often failed to adequately match the often-scant court records with the full name and Social Security Number of the consumer to meet the Fair Credit Reporting Act’s “maximum possible accuracy” standard.
This is part one of a four-part series that looks at how inaccurate credit reporting is being fought by a attorneys, the CFPB, and state AGs. You may read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
In the news this month are several successful efforts to improve credit report accuracy, compensate the victims of credit bureau malfeasance and also to bring some credit repair doctors to heel. Did it take a village? No, it took a combination of strong consumer laws, a strong CFPB, tough state attorneys general working on a bi-partisan basis and, finally, consumer attorneys engaged in private enforcement of the laws as another line of defense. For markets to work fairly, consumers need all these levels of protection.
In addition to demonstrating the importance of layered consumer protection and enforcement mechanisms, the cases also show that it is important to regulate the bureaus and hold them accountable, because despite their arrogant disregard for meeting the accuracy and reinvestigation standards of the law, they serve as gatekeepers to financial and employment opportunity. The Federal Trade Commission has concluded that up to 1 in 4 of all credit reports contain serious mistakes and 5% of all reports contain mistakes that could lead to paying more for or credit or to a denial of credit. Keeping an eye on the credit bureaus is important.
This is part one of a four-part series that looks at how inaccurate credit reporting is being fought by a attorneys, the CFPB, and state AGs. You may read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
In the news this month are several successful efforts to improve credit report accuracy, compensate the victims of credit bureau malfeasance and also to bring some credit repair doctors to heel. Did it take a village? No, it took a combination of strong consumer laws, a strong CFPB, tough state attorneys general working on a bi-partisan basis and, finally, consumer attorneys engaged in private enforcement of the laws as another line of defense. For markets to work fairly, consumers need all these levels of protection.
In addition to demonstrating the importance of layered consumer protection and enforcement mechanisms, the cases also show that it is important to regulate the bureaus and hold them accountable, because despite their arrogant disregard for meeting the accuracy and reinvestigation standards of the law, they serve as gatekeepers to financial and employment opportunity. The Federal Trade Commission has concluded that up to 1 in 4 of all credit reports contain serious mistakes and 5% of all reports contain mistakes that could lead to paying more for or credit or to a denial of credit. Keeping an eye on the credit bureaus is important.
A jury in California last week awarded $60 million in statutory and punitive damages to more than 8,000 consumers who sued TransUnion, one of the three credit reporting agencies.
The consumers filed the class action, claiming that TransUnion violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) when it misidentified them in their credit reports as terrorists and drug traffickers. It turns out the real bad guys had names that were similar to the plaintiffs in the case.
The plaintiffs will each receive more than $7,300 as their share of the award, after they were wrongly identified in their credit reports as being engaged in criminal activity.
The FCRA requires credit reporting agencies to ensure that the information contained in consumers’ credit reports is as accurate as possible. The law is intended to protect consumers from misinformation being used against them.
A potential class action lawsuit brought by a former employee against Five Guys claims the popular burger chain violated the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and California labor law by conducting background checks on employees without properly notifying them, according to a report from BigClassAction.com.
BigClassAction.com reports that the plaintiff, Jeremy R. Lusk, claims Five Guys “regularly secured credit and background reports on employees, conducted background checks on potential, current, and former employees, and used this information to make hiring decisions without providing clear disclosures.”
Lusk claims that Five Guys violated the FCRA – which promotes the accuracy, fairness, and privacy of consumer information contained in the files of consumer reporting agencies – and California’s Consumer Credit Reporting Agencies Act (CCRAA) and Investigative Consumer Reporting Agencies Act (ICRAA).