There is plenty of blame to go around for the downturn in the economy but the bulk of it should be placed squarely on the unregulated credit bureaus. These agencies have absolutely no incentive to maintain accruate information on consumers. The more inaccuracies in a credit file the more credit monitoring subscriptions they can sell. It's like having the "fox guarding the hen".
When a credit report is disputed the credit bureaus are pretty much useless. All they do is forward the dispute to the reporting creditor. They may or may not research your issue but is more than willing to respond to the credit bureaus that the current reporting is accurate and should remain unchanged. Of course the credit bureaus don't care to question the due deligence of the creditors or lack there of. So now...what do you do? They oblige you with the option of including a statement in your credit report stating that the issue has been disputed. So what? That doesn't change a thing. Your score is lowered, the credit bureaus get to sell another credit monitoring subscription, and the predatory lenders get to charge you higher interest rate and put you in unaffordable mortgages and consumer loans.
In the words of T. Harv Eker, the roots create the fruits (results). Now let's imagine a tree. Let's suppose this tree represents the tree of a credit bureau. Hanging from this tree are the fruits (struggling consumers). So we look at the struggling consumers and because they are not doing so well we tend to put more attention and focus on them. But what is it that actually creates those particular bad fruits?
"It's the seeds and the roots that create those fruits". It's not complicated, if the struggling consumers are to be saved, first the credit bureaus (roots) and the creditors (seeds) must be regulated for change.
I say, regulate those credit bureaus, force the creditors to report responsibly, and there will be little or no need for predatory lending.
N'Marie Crumbie
Director of Public Relations
Comments(0)