Comcast Request for Credit Report Without Permissible Reason Class Action

You can’t simply procure a credit report on anybody you’re curious about. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), parties who want to obtain a report must have a proper reason in order to do so. But the complaint for this class action alleges that Comcast Corporation and Comcast Cable Communications, LLC requested or obtained consumer reports on persons without their knowledge, without their authorization, and without a permissible reason.

The class for this action is all natural persons living in the US who received a telephone solicitation from Comcast and whose consumer report shows an inquiry by Comcast, where Comcast has no open account or record of an application for one, between April 2, 2015 and the present.

Plaintiff James Everett Shelton lives in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. Sometime in June 2018, Comcast placed a call to Shelton’s telephone to market its services to him.

During the call, the complaint says, Comcast never mentioned to Shelton that it wanted to review his credit report and Shelton never gave the company permission to do so.

According to the complaint, he was “shocked” when he learned that the company had made inquiries to Experian to access his credit report. He called Comcast to remind them that he had never consented to that, the complaint says, and demanded that Comcast remove its “hard inquiry” from his Equifax file.

Comcast did not remove its request. In fact, the complaint alleges that it initiated a second request for a “hard pull” of information from Shelton’s Experian credit file on June 27.

What kind of reasons are permissible for a request for a credit report? If Shelton had been applying for a credit card from Comcast, the company would have had a good reason to examine his credit report. Similarly, if he were applying for a job at Comcast, the company would have been able to request one, with his permission, as a potential employer. But no such reason existed.

So why would Experian accept the request? The complaint says that “Comcast falsely certified that it was inquiring into [Shelton’s] credit report for an extension of credit…” This not true, the complaint says; Shelton had not consented to Comcast’s request for a credit report on him and the company had no permissible purpose for its inquiry.

According to the complaint, this is not a rare occurrence: Comcast routinely and systematically obtains credit reports of consumer[s] during telephone solicitations with no permissible purpose or written consent…” The company has received complaints and had other legal actions filed against it for the same reason, the complaint says, but it persists in its unlawful actions.

Article Type: Lawsuit
Topic: Privacy
Tags: Credit Reports, No permissible purpose for request for report, Unauthorized Credit Reports or Credit Pulls