What procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy must the agencies use?
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The Fair Credit Reporting Act is designed to protect consumers from inaccurate or outdated information on credit reports.
MAXIMUM POSSIBLE ACCURACY and The Fair Credit Reporting Act
All references to code sections are courtesy of the Legal Information Institute at Law.Cornell.edu.
The Fair Credit Reporting Act requires the Credit Reporting Agencies, or Consumer Reporting Agencies to have a procedure to assure “maximum possible accuracy”.
The section that discusses the requirements for maintain a credit file is 15 U.S.C. §1681e subsection [b].
As usual, we start with the statute. Please note that we will only be reviewing the section on maximum possible accuracy, so the rest of the section will not be reprinted or discussed.
(b) Accuracy of report
Whenever a consumer reporting agency prepares a consumer report it shall follow reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy of the information concerning the individual about whom the report relates.
Last time, we talked about Maximum Possible Accuracy for the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
But that is not all. The code says they must have a PROCEDURE TO ASSURE Maximum Possible Accuracy.
This means that they have to think about what is reported, and have a system to know that it is inaccurate.
In each of these cases, the key thing is that the information is inaccurate. Remember, the Fair Credit Reporting Act can only help fix problems of false, inaccurate information. If the information is true, you cannot remove that information, no matter how much you might try.
So what would be a valid procedure?
For example, as the recent consent order in the White/Acosta v. Equifax, TransUnion and Experian cases, has shown, if a consumer files for Bankruptcy, they must change the reporting WITHOUT the intervention of the creditors. So even if your creditors still think update and show that you still owe, they should show that the account is Discharged in Bankruptcy.
They know that they have a problem with mixing credit files up. They have known for several years. They are supposed to be able to keep your file separated, and they know it. That would be another example.
The problem gets stickier when the account is an ID Theft account. How can they know? Maybe, if the account comes with a report that you live at a different address? That should trigger someone looking at the file more closely.
The short of this is that they must actually look at the accounts, and have a way to assure that the information that they are disseminating is accurate to the fullest extent.
If you have been impacted by anything we mentioned here, you can make an appointment to see us.
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Terrific work! This is the type of information that should be shared around the web. Shame on the search engines for not positioning this post higher!