The Federal Trade Commission on Thursday (April 7) ordered Dun & Bradstreet to make “substantial changes” to its processes to help small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and offer refunds to businesses harmed by its deceptive practices in selling its CreditBuilder products.
In a January complaint, the FTC alleged that “many businesses” have complained of errors in Dun & Bradstreet business credit reports that have “cost them time, expense, and opportunities,” according to a Thursday (April 7) press release.
Dun & Bradstreet have also “profited from businesses’ pain by selling them a line of products that purported to help them improve their reports,” the FTC said. “In fact, for many businesses, these benefits proved illusory, while the costs were all too real.”
Dun & Bradstreet credit reports, ratings and scores “are often key factors in whether and on what terms businesses will extend credit or award contracts to other businesses,” the commission said, meaning “the contents of Dun & Bradstreet reports can be vitally important to many small and mid-sized businesses.”
The FTC ordered Dun & Bradstreet to either delete incorrect credit report information or perform a reinvestigation of the information to confirm its accuracy, investigate and correct errors promptly and provide businesses with free access to the revised information when errors are corrected.
Dun & Bradstreet must also “make clear disclosures to companies to which it is selling its CreditBuilder products about the rate at which the firm accepts subscribers’ requests to add payment history information,” the commission said.
The company must provide refunds to many businesses that purchased CreditBuilder products between April 2015 and May 2020, as well as offer cancellations or refunds to many current customers.
The FTC reported recently that Americans lost more than $5.8 billion to fraud in 2021, with 2.8 million consumers filing reports.
Related: FTC: Americans Lost $5.8B to Fraud in 2021
That’s a 70% year-over-year increase in fraud compared to 2020, and only includes the reported cases, not the total fraud cases that were perpetrated last year.
About half of these fraud cases — 1.4 million — were identity theft cases, while other popular scams included fraudulent savings and checking accounts, which rose 64% from 2020. Reports of fraudulent mobile telephone accounts declined by 22%.
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