The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) specifies the reasons parties may obtain consumer credit reports on others. The list of valid reasons is limited. The complaint for this class action alleges that Comcast Cable Communications, LLC has violated the FCRA by doing hard credit pulls on consumers when they so much as inquire about the price of its services.
Two classes have been defined for this action.
- The Impermissible Access Class is all natural persons living in Georgia whose consumer reports show an inquiry by Comcast and for which Comcast has no open account or record of a written request for an account between March 14, 2014 and the present.
- The Impermissible Use Class is all natural persons living in Georgia whose consumer reports are recorded as received by Comcast for which Comcast has a record of a review of that data between March 14, 2014 and the present.
Around March 5, 2019, plaintiff Michael Hearn called Comcast to ask about its services. Hearn is not a current customer of Comcast and he did not ask to sign up for the company’s services.
However, the complaint claims that, during the call, Hearn received instantaneous notification that his credit had received a hard pull. Not only had Comcast pulled his credit; Hearn’s credit score dropped at that moment. Presumably the fall in his score was related to the hard pull and therefore represented actual damage to Hearn from Comcast’s illegal pull.
The complaint says that Comcast had not asked Hearn’s permission to check his credit and had not even asked for his social security number or otherwise informed him that it was going to do a credit pull. Hearn was asking about pricing and not signing up for services. Comcast had no right to access Hearn’s personal credit information, the complaint claims, and none of the law’s permissible reasons for doing so.
The complaint refers to the list of permissible reasons in the law at 15 U.S.C. § 1681b(a)(3)(A-G). This portion of the FCRA says that consumer reporting agencies “may furnish a consumer report under the following circumstances and no other” and then lists those circumstances. They include such things as a response to a court order, for employment purposes, or “in connection with a business transaction that is initiated by the consumer[.]”
The complaint points out that “no business transaction[] had been initiated” when Comcast pulled Hearn’s report. The alleged violation of the FCRA is the sole count presented in the complaint.
Article Type: LawsuitTopic: Consumer
Most Recent Case Event
Comcast Hard Credit Pull for Simple Inquiry FCRA Complaint
March 14, 2019
The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) specifies the reasons parties may obtain consumer credit reports on others. The list of valid reasons is limited. The complaint for this class action alleges that Comcast Cable Communications, LLC has violated the FCRA by doing hard credit pulls on consumers when they so much as inquire about the price of its services.
comcast_improper_credit_report_requests_compl.pdfCase Event History
Comcast Hard Credit Pull for Simple Inquiry FCRA Complaint
March 14, 2019
The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) specifies the reasons parties may obtain consumer credit reports on others. The list of valid reasons is limited. The complaint for this class action alleges that Comcast Cable Communications, LLC has violated the FCRA by doing hard credit pulls on consumers when they so much as inquire about the price of its services.
comcast_improper_credit_report_requests_compl.pdf