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Experian - countless violations

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Florida AG investigates Experian’s freecreditreport.com and its other ripoff companies

A reader sent me the URL to FLORIDA AG INVESTIGATES FREECREDITREPORT.COM - thank you!

Posted: Wednesday, November 15 at 06:33 pm CT by Bob Sullivan

The Florida state attorney general’s office has opened an investigation into potentially misleading advertising by FreeCreditReport.com.

The Web site, owned by credit bureau Experian Group Ltd, offers consumers a chance to obtain their credit reports and credit score by signing up for a paid subscription service.

In response to a public record inquiry by MSNBC.com, the office of Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist issued a statement indicating it had opened an investigation to determine whether Experian has violated Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.

The investigation will cover several entities owned by Experian, including Consumerinfo.com, Inc., Experian Consumer Direct; Qspace, Inc.; Iplace, Inc.; and the Web sites Consumerinfo.com; Creditexpert.com; and Creditmatters.com.

The inquiry will examine allegations of the firm’s “failure to adequately disclose negative option enrollment ... deceptive advertising, misleading domain name, and failure to honor cancellations,” the agency says on its Web site. The investigation involves a potential civil—not a criminal—case, and the opening of the investigation does not constitute proof of wrongdoing.

...

This not the first time FreeCreditReport.com has run into trouble with regulators. In August 2005, Experian settled charges leveled by the Federal Trade Commission that it purposely “misled consumers about their association with the annual free credit report program,” the FTC said.

Experian admitted no wrongdoing when settling the charges, but agreed to refund consumers and surrender about $1 million in “ill-gotten gains,” according to the FTC. It also agreed to change marketing strategies. ...

Of course Experian owns the FTC along with the other corporate criminals and a million dollars is pocket change for Experian.

I had a brief look at the comments and among the many people with complaints, this comment got my attention:

It is called natural selection. If someone from the general public is dumb enough to get suckered in, then it’s fair for their money to be taken from them. The smartest, and less gullable, retain their money while the less intelligent distribute their money freely to the economy through dontations to a TV Preacher, Susan in Africa with her orphans, and for a ‘free’ credit report.

As I’m working on my response to the Capital One memorandum regarding the $50,000 in attorneys fees they want from me, this comment seems to be exactly how the credit bureaus’ and creditors’ executives and their scum sucking lying attorneys think.

Why do people think that it’s OK to steal from others who are “less intelligent” than they THINK they are?

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Reader mail:  Comments from a former Experian dispute agent

Hello Christine,

I wanted to commend you for the battle you are wagering against the CRAs. It is indeed an uphill battle. I ran across your posted depositions with Experian employees while searching for an address for Experian.

It was definitely like pulling teeth for you to get any understandable answers during the depositions. I had a hard time distinguishing if you are an attorney or just a citizen representing yourself in this action, but whichever it is, please do not stop putting pressure on these businesses.

You are so right about nobody caring about the little people. This country, from the top down, is geared toward businesses and not the people. That is NOT what this country is supposed to be all about. The people themselves are so complacent and gullible, it’s sad.

I am sure that Experian hand picked the people that you were to depose. I’m sure they purposely picked people that would not know the answers to your questions so that they wouldn’t be lying when answering “I don’t know”. Common sense tells you they do have people that would know the answers to those questions. How convenient they were not the ones offered for deposition.

There is, indeed, loads of incorrect information on a lot of the people housed in Experian’s database. While most of it does get reported incorrectly (whether intentional or not) by the creditors, Experian has no desire to go against what the creditors report. It is the creditors that are Experian’s customers, not the consumers. Experian has teams of lawyers making sure they are not breaking any of the FCRA’s laws, or so they say. If they are following the laws, then the laws need to be changed. The consumer doesn’t have a fighting chance.

I say these things Christine because I am an ex employee from Experian. I lasted almost 9 months (3 of which were in training) as a dispute agent before I walked out. I just couldn’t take it anymore. I absolutely hated it when consumers would ask me a question, like a credit score question, and I would have no answer for them. It tore me up inside when someone had an account listed on their report that was truly not their account and they couldn’t get anyone to take it off. The creditor had gone out of business, the consumer could not get in touch with them and still the account would not come off. That is just criminal to me. Until the creditor tells Experian to remove an item it will remain on the report.

I, as a normal person, could no longer work in a business that would do that to people and have no problem with doing it. I care too much. I have morals and ethics. It bothered me so much that I became ill from the stress.

So, now here I am...with no job

But I just couldn’t take it anymore.

Kudos to you Christine. I’m glad there are people like you left in this country. They are definitely few and far between these days. Too bad there isn’t a business I could start up that would actually HELP consumers fight the CRAs. The credit clinics suck. They promise people they can get the negative stuff removed from their reports and they can’t. No more than the consumer can do themselves. Bottom line is: if the creditor says it’s correct, it stays. Experian did stress to its’ employees that they wanted the information contained on the reports to be accurate and all inaccurate information had to be removed, but again, it is “accurate” as long as the creditor says it is whether they are telling the truth or not. The only options for the consumer at that point are to either contact the creditor and get them to report it correctly, put a consumer statement on the account or of course hire an attorney and file suit. Which, of course, they know most people will not have the time or the money to do.

What a shame they have allowed our country to come to this

The reader edited the original email for publication to ensure that Experian cannot identify the ex employee.  The CRAs make their employees sign confidentiality agreements and it’s quite possible that a public statement as the above violates the terms of the employment contract.  If CRA employees were free to talk about the investigation practices, the CRAs would have to change their practices.

Regarding my depositions, I should of course have filed motions to compel answers and documents.  But not being a lawyer and having no money / credit left after building my house, I didn’t.

I really will try to annotate the Experian depositions and post all the exhibits, been having lots of computer problems (sent my main machine to Sager for warranty repairs 6 weeks ago) and everything is such a struggle.

If I hadn’t started building a house, I really would have had to leave the country.  The lawsuits are so stressful and sitting at the computer 24/7/360 was causing health problems, they literally kill you with their lies.  Physically I feel a lot better now, but I still got so much work to do on my new house and will have to complete it mostly by myself.

I’ll do what I can to document the Experian lies and their way of DELIBERATELY destroying the credit scores of consumers with OLD collections or charge offs with INCORRECT recent late payments and Experian allowing creditors to furnish incomplete data. 

INCORRECT recent late payments—MANY creditors report a charge-off every month, resulting in a 90+ day LATE payment rated by credit scoring software as LATE every time the creditor reports.  The FICO scores are often lowered over 50 points by these INCORRECT late payments.  A correctly reported charge-off from several years ago has little impact on the scores with good current payment history.

I see these INCORRECT RECENT lates in almost EVERY Credit Analysis and while I don’t see it as often, Equifax also allows creditors to report these recent lates.

Experian also allows furnishers NOT to report OLD payment history and then it is often impossible to determine that a charge-off occurred several years ago and it can only be rated according to the incorrect NEWER status date.

Experian sells credit reports to customers KNOWING that they have violated the contract and allow unauthorized persons to use their Experian account to obtain consumer credit reports (Dana Capital).

And they lie, lie and lie again to the courts and in the depositions. 

The problem is of course that the LIARS, the Experian attorneys and select employees who are chosen for the depos, have no morals, no ethics and no conscience. 

It always comes down to PEOPLE willing to sell their soul for a few dollars.

I know it’s hard to find decent jobs and that it really doesn’t matter which corporation you work for, almost all engage in illegal or at least unethical conduct to maximize profits.

Most courts, legislators and regulators openly support the corporations.

From 10/5/06: Court orders Capital One to file Memorandum re. the $50,000 attorneys fees demand

“Americans didn’t become independent because they sued the Queen, Hitler wasn’t stopped by a court order and the slaves weren’t freed because they voted for freedom.”

Nothing changed since these times.  It’s hard for me to accept that in today’s “civilized” world, evil rules and prevails in court and that only violence will make a difference.

This blog has been accessed over 2 million times.

Most reader mail (whatever I find in the junk folder and much gets deleted before I see it) is from people requesting help with their LVNV, American Agencies or whatever collections and credit problems.  I’ve had people email entire credit reports for FREE advice. (Email is NOT secure, don’t email your credit reports.)

But for about every 100 freeloaders, I get mail from someone who cares enough to DO something.  When “doing something” means quitting a CRA job, that’s quite a sacrifice.  And it’s important that these actions are publicized.  It’s so encouraging to see that at least a few people still have a conscience.

My next posting is going to be about a reader who is standing up for her rights and publishing her suit and the video deposition.

Monday, September 25, 2006

ALERT:  Experian sells consumer credit reports with less than half the data and refuses disputes

A CreditFactors subscriber ordered the $10 report at Experian

What you get is THIS “report”—it contains LESS than half the data!

So she tried to dispute, and Experian then went into VERIFICATION mode and DECLINED her attempt to dispute incorrect data.

Experian took her $10 - provided the partial consumer disclosure, but REFUSED the disputes!

The audacity to provide the credit report WITHOUT verifying the consumer’s identity.  Experian couldn’t care less who gets your personal identifying data. 

Experian’s objective is to limit consumer disputes.

Of course this piece of crap Experian sold her does NOT contain a report number, so she can’t dispute by phone.  You get the FULL report with at least most data and the report number if you dispute online.

It’s really too bad that ONLY violence gets results in America.  The banks and CRAs control the courts, consumer attorneys and legislators.

UPDATE:  Apparently you have to RE-APPLY to dispute and to get the full Experian report at http://www.experian.com/cic/

“cic” stands for ConsumerInfo.com, the Experian owned consumer report reseller.  Consumers go to Experian.com to order their EXPERIAN report, Experian provides the links to ConsumerInfo.com, consumers PAY ConsumerInfo.com for the report that contains all identifying data, but is missing over half the account data, and then consumers have to go through “verification” to get the complete report and to be able to dispute.

Only in America ....

Sunday, September 03, 2006

Experian finally reports the deletion dates for derogatory accounts again

I just reviewed a client’s Experian investigation results and to my surprise they disclosed the deletion dates again.

This was an issue at the deposition of Kimberly Hughes.  While Experian USED to report how long derogatory accounts would remain on the credit report, they stopped disclosing this most important data a few years ago, most likely because many consumers sued Experian for re-aging the accounts in violation of the FCRA.

Several times they started to report the deletion dates again for a few weeks and then stopped again.  Ms. Hughes stated during the 6/13/06 deposition that Experian chose not to disclose this data and that consumers were welcome to CALL Experian to get deletion dates.  Of course we all know what scummy liars they are (routinely commit perjury) and I recommended to my clients to request disclosure of the deletion dates with their disputes. 

I hope that ALL Experian consumer disclosures contain the deletion dates, not just investigation results for the consumers who requested disclosure with their disputes.  Please post here if your derogs do not have the deletion dates.  You need to review the reports obtained directly from Experian, resold reports are missing this as well as other important data.

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

The depositions of Experian’s Kimberly Hughes, Dudley Hall and Kathleen Centanni

A reader is suing pro se and asked about the Experian depos, so I posted the transcripts of the depos of Kimberly Hughes, Dudley Hall and Kathleen Centanni taken on 6/13 and 6/14 in Dallas:

http://forum.creditcourt.com/discus/messages/803/7610.html

I have only read the beginning of the Hughes depo and it becomes immediately clear why the Experian reporting is so screwed up.  Ms. Hughes has no clue what the data on the Expeiran report means.

She thinks the data in the 2 fields in each column of the Experian consumer disclosures is interchangeable.  Hopefully I’ll get to post the exhibits so you can see what I’m talking about.

It is really too bad that I’m the ONLY person on the planet who wants to find out how the reported data is utilized by creditors and credit scores.  200,000,000+ people are affected, nobody cares ...

I have always wondered why Fair Isaac doesn’t provide the details about the Experian score factors as with TU and Equifax.

It’s becoming quite obvious that the Experian data is incredibly corrupt, with their own employees NOT knowing which data is supposed to be reported in which field.  I have noticed that the Experian scores are often substantially different from the TU and Equifax reports even with the same accounts being reported.

Despite all my research, I do not know how a creditor or scoring software would determine the AGE of a delinquency.  Obivously, a chargeoff that occurred last month is much more derogatory than a charge-off 5 years ago.

How is the date of the charge-off determined?

I used to think that it was the date of the status.  But, if you pay a charge-off, the status date is changed to the date of payment, which could be years later.  Often creditors report a payment history and then you can conclude that the first time they report the charge-off was the date of the charge-off.  But what about those occasions when the payment history is NOT reported?

Ms. Hughes stated that the status date can also be the reporting date.

If this is how Experian instructs the furnishers to report, it’s clear why Fair Isaac can’t provide details about the score factors.  Consumers would be outraged if they realized that their Experian scores are based on data that makes no sense at all.

It really sucks that there is no interest in these issues.

I don’t exactly have spare time or cash and while I know what to ask in subsequent depos, I’m not sure whether it’s worth it. 

The consumer attorneys are too corrupt and/or too stupid to even grasp the concepts of data fields, underwriting and scores.

And the consumers really don’t care.  They just want deletions, hoping to be able to finance more crap they don’t need.

That’s great for Experian and the finance industry in general.  I have not been motivated to work on this at all.  It really floors me that out of 200,000,000 consumers I’m the only one with enough brains and curiosity to have made an effort to find out what the Experian data is supposed to mean and how it affects credit scores.

Some notes on depositions for pro ses:

The Experian depositions - taking depositions