Credit-reporting agencies’ failure to address damaging errors plaguing thousands of Americans
“Dispatch investigation | Credit scars”
Credit-reporting agencies’ failure to address damaging errors plaguing thousands of Americans prompts call for swift action
They can look like harmless errors: A misspelled name. A transposed number. A paid debt listed as past due.
But mistakes on credit reports can inflict widespread damage. And because there are insufficient rules on how credit-reporting agencies must correct them, Americans are left virtually powerless to erase the mistakes.
The Dispatch documented the plight of thousands who, through no fault of their own, have been denied the chance to buy a home or a car, take out a loan for college, rent an apartment, land a job, join the Armed Forces, receive medical care or even open a checking account.
Elected officials, including President Barack Obama, suspect that the problems plague millions of Americans and are calling for reform after reviewing a summary of the newspaper’s findings.
The federal law that governs credit reporting is fraught with loopholes and obstacles that make correcting mistakes difficult, if not impossible, the newspaper found.
During a yearlong investigation, The Dispatch collected and analyzed nearly 30,000 consumer complaints filed with the Federal Trade Commission and attorneys general in 24 states that alleged violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act by the three largest credit-reporting agencies in the United States — Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.
Industry observers say it is among the most comprehensive reviews ever conducted of complaints against credit-reporting agencies.
The complaints document the inability of consumers to correct errors that range from minor to financially devastating. Consumers said the agencies can’t even correct the most obvious mistakes: That’s not my birth date. That’s not my name. I’m not dead.
FROM: dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/05/06/credit-scars.html
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They are saying: “8 Food Frauds on Your Shopping List”
Deal of the Day: What’s sold as olive oil, fish, spices and other goods may just be cheap knockoffs.
Most consumers know to ignore emails alerting them to foreign lottery winnings and to steer clear of “designer” bags sold on street corners. But experts say even scam-savvy shoppers may be falling prey to fraud at a surprising place: the grocery store.
Food fraud — the adulteration, dilution or mislabeling of goods stocked on the shelf — is part of a growing trend of faux household goods . Although there is little data on the frequency of food fakery, experts say there’s growing awareness of the problem. The lack of information on the subject recently prompted the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention — a nonprofit that sets standards used by the FDA — to establish a Food Fraud Database. And a new study in the Journal of Food Science analyzed the top offenders identified by the database, including olive oil, milk and honey. “We’re seeing similar trends in food to other items — if it can be faked, it probably is,” says Tara Steketee, the senior manager for brand protection at OpSec Security, an anti-counterfeiting consulting firm. “There are actually counterfeit tomatoes, believe it or not.” (In that example, she says, garden-variety tomatoes get marketed as the more expensive heirloom ones.)
The growing number of imported foods consumed by Americans makes it harder to identify the frauds, experts say. A recent FDA-commissioned Institute of Medicine study found the quantity of imported foods and drugs nearly tripled over the past 10 years. Currently, imports account for 85% of seafood, 39% of fruits and nuts and 18% of vegetables. That leads to great variety, but also increased risk from less rigorous food safety practices in other countries, says Clare Narrod, the risk analysis program manager for the University of Maryland’s Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, who served on the committee preparing the Institute of Medicine study. Criminals may also re-route a problem product through other countries in an attempt to evade U.S. bans.
FROM: smartmoney.com/spend/deal-of-the-day/8-food-frauds-on-your-shopping-list-1334616484577/
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