Mississippi Takes On Experian

As victims of identity theft can tell you, credit agencies can be difficult.  The State of Mississippi feels your pain and believes that it is time to put the system on trial – starting with Experian.  Last month, Mississippi filed a lawsuit against Experian alleging that it is violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) by failing to maintain proper procedures to verify the accuracy of credit information and correct mistakes.

The suit was initially filed by the Mississippi Attorney General in state court, but it has since been removed to federal court.  The lawsuit accuses Experian of knowingly including flawed and inaccurate data in the credit reports of millions of consumers.  However, as we all know, just running a shoddy business is not illegal.  The legal problems come into play because Experian is allegedly offering no straightforward way for users to correct the flawed or inaccurate data in its reports.  If these allegations are true, that would be a violation of the FCRA.

Experian is the largest credit reporting agency and has annual revenues of nearly $5 billion.  According to the Associated Press, Experian has informed investors that although it tries to comply with the law, “[w]e might fail to comply with international, federal, regional, provincial, state or other jurisdictional regulations, due to their complexity, frequent changes or inconsistent application and interpretation.”