You Have A Right To See Specialty Consumer Reports Too
You have the right to know what nationwide specialty consumer reporting companies are saying about you. And you’re entitled to one free report each year, just like with the traditional nationwide consumer reporting companies – Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. What’s more, nationwide specialty consumer reporting companies have to make it easy for you to get a copy of any file they keep on you – at a minimum, by providing a toll-free number for you to call and order your report. This is an important right, because if you don’t know what’s in those files, you can’t dispute any inaccuracies.
That’s exactly what we said to nationwide specialty consumer reporting companies in a bulletin we sent out today. Under federal law, they must give you an easy way to get a free copy of your report every 12 months.
So what exactly are nationwide specialty consumer reporting companies and how do they affect you?
These are companies that collect information on a nationwide basis about medical records or payments, residential or tenant history, check-writing history, employment history, or insurance claims. Like the three largest nationwide consumer reporting companies (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion), they gather and report information about you to creditors, landlords, insurance companies, employers, and others.
You can order reports – including your annual free reports – from Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion at annualcreditreport.com – and we recommend that you check your report with each company at least once per year. But you will have to order the specialty consumer reports individually from each reporting company.
To help you access specialty and other consumer reports, we created a list of approximately 40 companies, with the companies’ websites and toll-free telephone numbers. The type of information collected may vary by the company and its specialty industry.
