Sens. Steve Daines (R-MT) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) re-introduced last week a bill to protect victims of credit reporting error.
The FIX Credit Reporting Errors Act would require credit reporting agencies to forward documents the consumer has provided to dispute any errors. In the event of a credit report wrongly showing that a consumer had an outstanding balance on a credit card that was closed, the consumer would be able to include in their credit report a letter from the credit card company stating the account is closed and paid off.
Daines and Klobuchar introduced the FIX Credit Reporting Errors Act during the last Congress.
“Buying a home is difficult enough without having to worry about inaccuracies in your credit report which adds stress and in many cases will delay the purchase of the home,” Daines said. “What’s worse, credit reporting errors can easily inflate mortgage payments by thousands of dollars over the lives of loans. This bipartisan bill will help consumers by increasing transparency and make it easier for them to fix faulty errors in their credit report.”
Millions of consumer credit reports contain mistakes and errors, according to the Federal Trade Commission. This can lead to less favorable loan terms or denial of credit. These errors can take a long time to resolve and consumers often go through the dispute process with incorrect information on their credit reports.