p.s. That’s some odd favor they’re supposedly doing. Every time I’ve applied for credit, I’ve had to cough up my entire credit history. Seems to me someone doesn’t have a clue as to what he’s talking about. I know it was nigh on 30 years ago when I worked in a credit bureau, but at least I paid attention. Oh, and my boss was one of the good ones; he made sure that his collectors followed the law.
It only seems free because you never directly pay a bill for it.
Drinks are “free” in casinos, too.
You sign up for card, get the free miles, and cancel it. There is no direct or indirect cost - other than the opportunity cost associated with not getting a different card.
For things like the free baggage or upgrades or whatever, there’s usually an annual fee of $40 - $100 - this is a real cost, and it will be a good deal for some people and a bad deal for others, but it’s usually not too difficult to analyze.
Not that you get a bill for, true. So it must be free.
Credit Agencies don’t work for you and me. Their customers are the banks and other businesses that offer credit.
Way to exclude the part where I stated the cost, fuckwad.
Way to miss the entire point, asshole. Enjoy your freebies.
They get it because the creditors report the information to the credit bureaus each month. Do you honestly expect each of the hundreds of creditors to submit their information to each of the hundreds of other creditors? The credit bureaus make it easy and convenient to report the information to just one (or three, depending on how much you want to pay out each month in credit bureau fees) source.
Will do, thanks.
Sure, it’s not free to the company, or to the other cardholders that eventually pay for it, but it’s free to him. Why can’t he call it free?
If I get a free sample at the grocery store, I say, “I got a free piece of pizza.” I don’t say, “I got a piece of pizza that DiGiorno’s and Kroger’s bought for me, and I used up some shoe leather to get there, so it wasn’t free .”
I’ve had two issues with credit bureaus and in both cases, they investigated the matters and removed the incorrect data from my credit report. It’s not the credit bureaus that put the crap there, it’s other companies. As I said, I’ve always found them willing to correct a mistake as quickly as possible.
What’s the alternative? If the credit reporting agencies disappeared in a puff of smoke and somehow no new ones formed, lenders would have to either have to cut back dramatically on lending (unlikely), trust the borrower to honestly report their credit history (unlikely), or develop their own ways of assessing credit (a huge pain in the ass, but the least crappy option). A partial solution would be for banks (who AFAIK hold most consumer debt) to enter into reciprocal agreements that would allow them to share data amongst themselves.
I’m not arguing against the existence of clearinghouses, they seem like the most efficient way of doing things. But, if they disappeared (another poster’s stipulation, not mine), I am certain that lenders would work out solutions that approximate the current state of affairs and give them a similar level of confidence in their assessment of potential borrowers.
It is not needed to guess what credit reporting agencies help with credit markets, and what would happen without. Americans forget the rest of the world exists, but in amost all of the emerging markets, there is not such infrastructure, and the credit is much harder to obtain, it is more expensive and almost never not secured by real guaranties like houses.
Cite? 
What do other countries do?
I’m assuming that other countries have institutions that lend money and need a way to quickly determine a person’s creditworthiness. Outside of the US, who holds that kind of information? How does a potential lender check on a borrower? How can a borrower check on their own credit history?
Other first-world countries mostly have the same sort of entities. They’re called credit reference agencies in the UK.
Pretty much. The credit bureaus work for the banks, not the general public. Alot of people don’t really realize that.
Do the UK’s entities have the same sorts of complaints that tend to pop up in the US (lack of transparency, difficulty for a borrower to discover and repair their information, etc.)
Just an FYI, when you file those online disputes, they usually go back to the original creditor to investigate.
If you are not in the developed countries, you do not get as much credit, you do not get credit that is not secured by the collaterals, and you pay more.
Americans are among the most spoiled persons on the planet and yet are never satisfied.