COLUMBUS, Ohio – With 31 states, including Ohio, announcing a crackdown on the nation’s largest credit-reporting agencies on Wednesday, consumers won’t have to endure 12 years of financial harassment like Julie A. Sagstetter did.
READ MORE: In the Columbus Dispatch
One letter separated Sagstetter from a woman who failed to pay her bills. But in the computerized eyes of the credit-reporting agencies, Julie A. Sagstetter was the same person as Julie V. Sagstetter, a financial scofflaw.
As a result, collection agencies called Julie A. day and night trying to seek payment on Julie V.’s unpaid credit cards. The Franklin County Sheriff’s Office posted a notice on Julie A.’s door alerting her that deputies were coming to repossess her car.
Her ordeal came to an end after she contacted Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine’s office.
Sagstetter is but one of thousands — if not millions — of consumers who have been unable to correct problems with their credit reports. But attorneys general expect that behavior to change with the settlement.
The agreement requires the agencies to launch investigations when consumers report mistakes, omit unpaid fines and tickets from credit reports, wait 180 days before reporting derogatory information about a medical debt, keep a list of credit furnishers such as credit-card companies, debt collectors and mortgage servicers who routinely provide erroneous information to credit reports; stop pitching fee-based credit-monitoring services or other products until a consumer’s complaint is resolved, provide the name of the original creditor when a debt collector seeks to add an unpaid bill to a credit report.
The agreement among Equifax, Experian, TransUnion and attorneys general in Ohio and 30 other states also requires the agencies to move more quickly to fix disputed information on credit reports and more carefully scrutinize certain data they’re furnished by collection agencies and others.
It also requires the agencies to pay $6 million and change certain business practices over the next three years.
DeWine says he initiated an investigation after a 2012 investigation by The Dispatch uncovered that consumers had been denied car loans, house loans and even jobs because of mistakes on their credit reports.
He called the reporting system fundamentally flawed.