Is it legal to discuss credit reports over the phone?

  • Thread starter Thread starter whitewolfe
  • Start date Start date
W

whitewolfe

Guest
I work for a real estate rental company. Potential tenants must submit an application and they are informed that we will pull their credit.

The manager pulls their credit report and makes the decision whether the person is approved to rent from the company. When we talk to the applicants on the phone about their application, we are instructed by the company to only tell them if they are approved or denied. We can say they are denied due to the credit report, but we are not allowed to discuss specifics of the credit report. We are told that this is due to "privacy laws."

Some people get really angry when I won't tell them specifically what was wrong with their credit. (Usually they have really horrible credit, not just one or two dings, so it's kinda silly they are acting surprised about it.)

Today a guy got really mad and said it was BS that I couldn't discuss the specifics of his credit report, even though I explained that he could go to Experian and pull the same report to see what we saw (and he would see plenty of bad stuff.)

I can't find anything online that would relate to my specific situation.

Does anyone have any information or resources that I could cite to these kinds of customers as to why I can't disclose details of their own credit report over the phone?
 
Think of it this way. If you call someone over the phone you don't know 100% that the person you are talking to is the person you want to talk to.

Also the law only requires that you give them the accepted or denied answer and which credit reporting agency that you used. There should also be a letter going out that says the same thing, BTW.
 
Back
Top