The recent revelation making headlines is that Equifax has been sending the wrong scores to potential lenders. Equifax, pursuant to requests for consumers’ credit scores, was sending erroneous information consisting of lower credit scores than what the consumer’s report actually earned. It was disclosed that this issue persisted for at lease a few weeks affecting hundreds of thousands of consumers. In some instances, the score was off by as much as 25 points.
We have written blogs about credit scores and how they are concocted. Credit scores are created by running the information in a consumer’s report through a complicated math equation that weights multiple factors, such as payment history, credit usage, varied types of credit, and length of time one has had a credit history. Whatever caused Equifax’s errors to appear in the scores remains to be seen (they say it was a “coding issue”). Regardless, the consumers affected by this issue have rights.
As a credit reporting agency, Equifax has an obligation to take all reasonable steps to assure maximum possible accuracy when creating a consumer report. A consumer report is one that contains information about a persons credit worthiness, credit standing, reputation, general characteristics, or mode of living. A credit score qualifies as a consumer report because it provides information about one’s credit standing and credit worthiness. Thus, when Equifax provides a false score, it provides a false consumer report. Those people who either failed to qualify or are paying higher interest rates may have rights to recover against Equifax for their harms.
If you recently received a denial or poor credit terms because of a credit score provided by Equifax, contact SmithMarco, P.C. for a completely free case review.