When viewed in context of TransUnion’s uniform and standard policies and business practices, one can easily assume that TransUnion realizes substantial cost savings by refusing to expend resources to resolve consumer disputes. Moreover, rather than comply with the law, TransUnion attempted to steer consumers with disputes toward its proprietary identity theft protection, TrueIdentity, from which it generates substantial profits. TransUnion failed to take either action in response to the plaintiff’s repeated requests. Amend the file by reflecting that the inquiry was generated by a party who did not have a permissible purpose to obtain a consumer report.The FTC went on to state that the credit reporting agency had two options: Further regulatory guidance from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) clarifies that a credit reporting agency’s duty involves reinvestigating disputed inquiries or deleting them when it appears that the inquiry was not made by a person who had a permissible purpose. The plaintiff followed those procedures, but to no avail. The FCRA outlines mechanisms by which consumers may dispute inaccurate or incomplete information in their credit files. TransUnion Disregarded the FCRA and Guidance from the FTC Both form letters sent urged the plaintiff to sign up for TrueIdentity, TransUnion’s propriety identify theft product, even though the plaintiff did not mention identity theft in his correspondence. When TransUnion received a second letter, it again sent him the identical letter in response. In response, the plaintiff sent another letter in August 2019 clarifying that Safe Home had no permissible basis for obtaining his credit report and requesting, once again, that the inquiry be deleted from his file. On receiving his letter, instead of conducting an investigation or removing the inquiry, TransUnion sent the plaintiff a letter that said, in part, “Your specific consent to the release of your credit information is not necessary for a permissible purpose to exist.” In July 2018, the plaintiff sent a written letter to TransUnion disputing the unauthorized Safe Home inquiry, requesting that it be removed from his credit file. Instead, a TransUnion representative told the plaintiff to contact Safe Home himself.Ībout three months later, he obtained a copy of his TransUnion personal credit report and found that the unauthorized Safe Home inquiry had not been removed. However, TransUnion did not conduct a reinvestigation of the plaintiff’s dispute of the Safe Home inquiry, nor did it notify Safe Home of the dispute or delete the inquiry from his credit file. Under the FCRA, credit reporting agencies, such as TransUnion, are obligated to conduct an investigation when a consumer disputes an action. Shortly after that, the plaintiff called TransUnion to dispute the Safe Home inquiry and request its removal from his credit file. Contrary to the plaintiff’s wishes, Safe Home sent an inquiry to TransUnion and obtained his credit report. He refused, emphatically stating that he did not authorize Safe Home to obtain his credit report. The telemarketer stated that Safe Home would need to obtain the plaintiff’s credit report before setting up a home consultation. In this case, the plaintiff received a phone call from a telemarketer in February 2018, promoting home security products and services of Safe Home Security, Inc. Timeline of Events Leading to the Lawsuit The complaint notes that failure to remove or address inaccuracies undercuts the healthy functioning of our nation’s consumer credit system by providing misleading credit history information about consumers to potential creditors and service providers. These types of inquiries misrepresent consumers’ true credit history, unfairly lowering the consumer’s credit score (termed “hard inquiries”). The class is comprised of over 246,000 American consumers nationwide.Īt issue in the case are inaccurate inquiries or inquiries that do not belong to consumers that appear on consumers’ credit reports provided by TransUnion. against TransUnion, a credit reporting agency. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania has granted class certification in a fair credit reporting lawsuit filed by Francis Mailman Soumilas, P.C.
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