DALLAS (Legal Newsline) — The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has announced Credit Protection Association (CPA) will pay $72,000 in civil penalties and be required to adopt new procedures after allegations of violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).
According to the FTC, the defendants failed to follow the Furnisher Rule of the FCRA. The company allegedly did not have an adequate policy in place to deal with consumer disputes involving information sent to credit reporting agencies.
“When consumers dispute potentially incorrect information in their credit reports, companies must not only investigate those disputes, but also let consumers know whether the information has been corrected. Otherwise, consumers may be unaware of additional steps they may need to take under the FCRA, including filing dispute statements directly with credit reporting agencies,” said Jessica Rich, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “Companies that fail to live up to these obligations can expect to hear from the FTC.”
Although CPA had written policies to deal with consumer disputes, it purportedly failed to properly train its employees on how to follow them.