It took more than four hours of questions aimed at credit bureau CEOs, but finally, after a marathon House Financial Services Committee hearing on Tuesday morning / afternoon … the National Consumer Law Center’s Chi Chi Wu said what had to be said.
“I’ve testified before Congress … six times,” she said, to nervous laughter. When, she was saying, will anything change?
Later, PIRG’s Ed Mierzwinski confessed that the first time he testified about credit report problems, the Congressional committee was named, partly, the “Coin Committee.”
It’s good to draw attention to credit report problems, so Congressional hearings are always welcome. There was time for a few one-liners, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez saying that parachutes with 20% error rates wouldn’t sell very well.
The newsiest thing I heard was the 4 million people — out of 158 million victims — took Equifax up on its offer of free credit monitoring. Another two million accepted a free second year, which Equifax (oddly) outsourced to Experian. There was another good moment in the hearing when Rep Vincente Gonzalez pointed out that, try as these three CEOs try to argue their companies are in competition, this outsourcing arrangement makes that sound a bit silly. There was another good moment when Rep. Nydia Velasquez asked a pointed question that struck at heart of credit report errors: how many errors a lender can make when telling credit bureaus about borrowers before they are kicked out of the system? Equifax CEO Mark Begor said he couldn’t answer, and would have to get back to her.
Sadly, the Equifax hack drew more attention to credit bureaus, and their failings, than any Congressional hearing could. To that end, I and the team at Spoke Media have spent the past six months looking into that hack, and our first episode releases next week. (Subscribe here)
Today’s hearing was really the first time a sitting executive from Equifax had to face questioning in the wake of that firm’s massive data breach in late 2017 — remember, former CEO Richard Smith was already “former” when he was sent to testify. Sadly, there were a lot of run-of-the-mill questions about what makes credit scores go down, what’s the difference between a score and a report, and so on. There were also a lot of softball questions asking the executives to imagine how terrible the world would be if credit bureaus didn’t exist.
There wasn’t much news. You can see my Tweetstorm about it here, including some photos. But I’ve learned in the past that readers (rightly) don’t care much for Congressional hearing stories. So, I’ll have more on this next week, when we talk about the podcast.
AOC: Do consumers ever consent to data collection? Equifax CEO: “No.” AOC: 20% error rates mean 12 members of this committee have errors.. if parachutes had a 20% failure rate… #creditbureaus pic.twitter.com/IX1nV3nxkK
— Bob Sullivan (@RedTapeChron) February 26, 2019
“Was anyone fired?” Equifax CEO is asked. Well, we have a story for you…coming next week in the podcast @BreachPodcast #creditbureaus
— Bob Sullivan (@RedTapeChron) February 26, 2019
Can you guarantee this will never happen again? Equifax CEO: “this is a war that will never end… I don’t think anyone can guarantee that.”
— Bob Sullivan (@RedTapeChron) February 26, 2019
Discussion about making it easier for consumers to remove things from credit reports inevitably turns to debtors-prison mentality…”We can’t let people get away with not paying bills!” This attitude is at the core of the error rate problem. /1 #creditbureaus
— Bob Sullivan (@RedTapeChron) February 26, 2019
Results in a “better 9 innocent people pay more for credit than one person get away with skipping out on a bill /2 #creditbureaus
— Bob Sullivan (@RedTapeChron) February 26, 2019
Rep. Roger Williams (R-Car Dealer) with the hard-hitting question: “Are you a capitalist or a socialist?” Lobbyists laugh lustily. #creditbureaus
— Bob Sullivan (@RedTapeChron) February 26, 2019
Maxine Waters says “this hearing is long overdue.” All three credit bureau CEOs at one witness desk pic.twitter.com/T1j04k0thW
— Bob Sullivan (@RedTapeChron) February 26, 2019
Well, hearings are great and all…what are “we the people” going to do about this at the ballot box?
This impacts our paychecks just like a tax bill or the stock market would.