The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said it will start accepting consumer complaints about credit reporting agencies and will provide “individual level complaint assistance,” according to a blog post from Scott Pluta, assistant director for the bureau’s Office of Consumer Response.
“Credit reporting touches the financial lives of nearly each and every American. Credit reports affect whether or not you are able to get a credit card, a home loan, an auto loan, or a student loan, the ability to rent an apartment or get hired, and even tasks as simple as getting a cell phone or electricity for your home,” Pluta wrote Monday in the post on the CFPB’s website.
The bureau will help consumers with incorrect information on their credit reports, access to credit files and scores, improper uses of credit reports, and problems with credit monitoring services.
Pluta also included tips for consumers to attempt to solve credit report problems on their own before turning to the CFPB.
“After you file a complaint with the credit reporting company, if you are dissatisfied with the resolution, file a complaint with us,” he wrote.
The CFPB assistant director said complaints help the bureau “inform and shape our priorities” and contribute to a study comparing credit scores sold to creditors and those sold to consumers, as well as the regulator’s new supervisory duties over reporting agencies.
Credit reporting marks the sixth type of consumer complaints the CFPB now collects online. The other five include mortgages, credit cards, bank accounts, consumer loans and student loans.
