Credit reporting industry will beef up ability to handle disputes, after agreement with New York State

The Wall Street Journal is reporting Monday that the three major credit reporting companies have agreed to overhaul their procedures for resolving disputes from consumers about specific members, in a front page story by Anna Maria Andriotis, link here. 

  

The agreement is with New York State but it should be implemented nationally. 

Extra employees will be hired to resolve disputes. The three major companies are Experian (Los Angeles and Dallas), Equifax (Atlanta), and Trans-Union (Pennsylvania).   Even though these companies have member and affiliated bureaus (one was at the RMA site in St. Paul MN, where I worked a while in 2003), these jobs would probably be at the corporate level.  Implementation will take over three years. 

   

I worked for Chilton, a precursor to today’s Experian, for six years in Dallas in the 1980s.  Member-consumer disputes were not the issue then that they are today, and identity theft was not nearly as rampant. Chilton’s data center was located on Fitzhugh, in Oak Lawn, and the corporate center was just north of I-635, called “Northpoint”. 

Required parking stickers could compromise home, school security

This little story isn’t exactly about identity theft, but I think it’s useful.  The stickers that people put on their cars can lead criminals to where they live, or particularly where their kids go to school. The AOL story is here.

   

It’s all pretty creepy.  But more communities these day require residents to have parking stickers.  And, no, the art work for this poster isn't someone's sticker.