WASHINGTON– The American Association of Consumer Credit Professionals (AACCP) is lauding the introduction of consumer protection legislation that seeks to restore Americans’ right to seek help to improve their credit by repealing a loophole in the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) the organization said is being exploited.
The bill was introduced by Rep. Al Lawson (D-FL).
“Millions of Americans rely on credit repair professionals and other consumer advocates for advice and guidance when they have questions about items on their credit reports,” the AACCP stated. “Regrettably, these consumer advocates are limited in their ability to adequately represent consumers because an anti-consumer loophole in the FCRA gives credit furnishers an excuse to ignore, without consideration or explanation, any correspondence sent on behalf of a consumer by a third party, be it a credit repair company or a nonprofit community organization.”
Consumers ‘Would Give Up’
According to the AACCP, many consumers “would give up” if they had to navigate the process for challenging and removing errors on their own.
“In fact, this is exactly what the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) found when it analyzed the credit reporting industry—around half of consumers abandon the process before completing it because they found it confusing and time consuming,” the organization said. “Consumers use professional services for everything else. It’s common sense that they should be able to use them in credit reporting and that they should get an investigation into disputes from furnishers.”
The ’Worst’ Part
According to the AACCP, the FCRA loophole prevents consumer advocates from formally representing consumers in the dispute process, “and worse yet, allowed many furnishers to adopt a policy of wholesale rejecting legitimate complaints whenever they suspected the correspondence was written by or with assistance from a third party. The new legislation proposed in Congress would repeal the loophole and more easily allow consumers to utilize credit repair professionals and require furnishers to fulfill their legal obligation to conduct investigations of consumer disputes.”
The AACCP said it has partnered with nonprofit groups—including the African American Empowerment Coalition, the National Asian American Coalition and the National Diversity Coalition—to lobby Congress to close the FCRA loophole.
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