Doomdark's Journal: CRAs (Credit Reporting Agencies), legalized extortion

Note to self: Credit Reporting Agencies (big three) suck, to varying degrees. I wish they didn't have the stranglehold over customers of all sorts. Nowadays it matters little if you have been a loyal customer of a bank for a decade. If the next guy from the street has better credit score, they are in and you are out. Banks (and even more so, car dealers, retail stores) often feel more like mouthpieces of CRAs when one applies for credit.

At the top of the (s)hitlist is worst of them all, Equifax. Scumbags have apparently managed to hide the required-by-law access to free reports (under specific circumstances) so there seems to be no way to access them. And trying to check if at some point during web ordering one could specify "yes, I was denied credit and am entitled to one free copy" option (as is the case with others) is useless. Before you know it, you have paid ten bucks for their crappy report that has 11 spelling of your name, 7 bogus addresses and only half of your actual employees.

Slightly better is Experian. Not much better, but at least it is possible to get the freebie report, and they do point it out (albeit not via web). And they point out specifically when you are actually ordering a report, and exact fees.

And finally, Best in Show, Trans-union. Compared to competition, they actually look like a decent company. They appropriately point out consumer's rights, show the way to web form that allows one to order various reports and dispute info. And list exact fees as well as circumstances under which various discount fees apply. And on top of that, their 'basic' rates are lower than competitors'. They also offer the possibility to "upgrade" from free report to one with score, by paying difference between full prices of matching reports. At least that's fair enough; they are in business of selling things. And on top of actually acting as a somewhat respectable business, their web site looks better than the other two. Imagine that.