{"id":187452,"date":"2011-06-24T18:49:00","date_gmt":"2011-06-24T23:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/06\/24\/more-evidence-that-we-live-in-a-feudal-society\/"},"modified":"2011-06-24T18:49:00","modified_gmt":"2011-06-24T23:49:00","slug":"more-evidence-that-we-live-in-a-feudal-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/06\/24\/more-evidence-that-we-live-in-a-feudal-society\/","title":{"rendered":"More Evidence That We Live in a Feudal Society"},"content":{"rendered":"

This time, it’s the credit report bureaus who are practicing Droit du seigneur*<\/sup> on us without lube<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The credit rating bureaus, whose reports influence everything from credit cards to mortgages to job offers, have a two-tiered system for resolving errors \u2014 one for the rich, the well-connected, the well-known and the powerful, and the other for everyone else.<\/p>\n

The three major agencies, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, keep a V.I.P. list of sorts, according to consumer lawyers and legal documents, consisting of celebrities, politicians, judges and other influential people. Those on the list \u2014 and they may not even realize they are on it \u2014 get special help from workers in the United States in fixing mistakes on their credit reports. Any errors are usually corrected immediately, one lawyer said.<\/p>\n

For everyone else, disputes are herded into a largely automated system. Their complaints are often electronically ferried to a subcontractor overseas, where a worker spends, on average, about two minutes figuring out the gist of the matter, boiling it down to a one-to-three-digit computer code that signifies the problem \u2014 \u201caccount not his\/hers,\u201d for example \u2014 and sending a dispute form to the creditor to investigate. Many times, consumer advocates say, the investigation translates to a perfunctory check of its records.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe legal responsibility of the credit reporting agencies and of the creditors is well established,\u201d said Leonard Bennett, a consumer lawyer in Newport News, Va. \u201cThere is a requirement that they do meaningful research and analysis, and it is almost never done.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For the rest of us, it’s all just serfdom.<\/p>\n

*<\/sup>Droit du seigneur is the apparently mythical practice of granting the lord of the manor the right to deflower new brides on their wedding night.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This time, it’s the credit report bureaus who are practicing Droit du seigneur* on us without lube: The credit rating bureaus, whose reports influence everything from credit cards to mortgages to job offers, have a two-tiered system for resolving errors \u2014 one for the rich, the well-connected, the well-known and the powerful, and the other …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[970,969,1004],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-evil","category-finance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187452"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187452\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}