The Public Interest Research Group has found a troubling amount of innaccurate credit reporting within the three major agencies. An alarming number of credit reports contain serious errors that could cause the denial of credit, a loan, or even a job. Further, some consumers never even received their reports, even after repeated calls.
Among the major credit report accuracy findings of the survey:
- Twenty-nine percent (29%) of the credit reports contained serious errors - false delinquencies or accounts that did not belong to the consumer - that could result in the denial of credit;
- Forty-one percent (41%) of the credit reports contained personal demographic identifying information that was misspelled, long-outdated, belonged to a stranger, or was otherwise incorrect;
- Twenty percent (20%) of the credit reports were missing major credit, loan, mortgage, or other consumer accounts that demonstrate the creditworthiness of the consumer;
- Twenty-six percent (26%) of the credit reports contained credit accounts that had been closed by the consumer but incorrectly remained listed as open;
- Altogether, 70% of the credit reports contained either serious errors or other mistakes of some kind.
Among the survey's major access to credit report findings: - Of the consumers that did obtain their credit reports, at least 14% of them were forced to call back 3 or more times after receiving busy signals or had to write a letter in order to receive their report;
- And 12% of the consumers waited two weeks or longer to receive their report once they finished requesting it. It took more than a month for one California man to receive his report.
- Overall, 15% of consumers who attempted to participate in the survey either made at least 3 phone calls and never got through or requested their reports but never received them.
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