credit report negligence = libel?

Several years ago, while my wife and I were looking to be approved for a new home loan, we ran across several problems with our credit reports. In some cases, several of my college loans had been sold from one loan company to another and they were appearing several times, making it look like I owed about four times as much as I actually owed. We had a few other items listed in our credit report that had never happened, a company or two that we had never even heard of...

None-the-less, I was a bit annoyed that it was *my* responsibility to notify the credit reporting agencies that *they* were wrong. I should also mention that it wasn't easy to get them to repair all of the items and there was a certain amount of hoop-jumping involved. I find this to be unjust.

While some would argue that a credit reporting agency makes it possible for us to take out loans and receive credit, I would ask, "when the hell did I ask for them to do this?" What if I didn't want an account of all of my personal information being kept somewhere? Do I have a choice in the matter?

Even better, if they screw up my report, and as a result I lose out on a loan approval and they make me look bad, can I sue them for libel or defamation as a result of their negligence or incompetence?

If you live in several of the Western states of he US, you are allowed one free copy of your credit report each year. In some cases, they will also send you a letter when something negative has been added to it, and offer you the opportunity to get a copy at that point, as well. At any other time, you have to pay for it.

So, they create a file on my personal financial history, not at my request and without my approval, and they maintain it sloppily and allow any creditor to drop bogus information in there unchecked (until I go to check it once per year to make sure they were valid), and then if they mess up I have to jump through hoops to get them to set things straight.

This has got to be the most "back-asswards" policy that I have ever heard of. Yet we just accept it as American consumers. We live in a backwards world, don't we?

I'll follow up this post in a little while with some more information on getting your free copy of your credit reports, in case you didn't know how. Keep in mind that this is only available to residents of certain states, though.