Credit Bureaus - Do we need three ?

Dear Honorable Senator Tom Carper Sir:

I want to bring to your attention the redundancy that the three credit bureaus is causing. Why do we need three firms Equifax, Experian and Tran Union? If all the three firms are telling the truth then they must be giving the exact same report. As you know every citizen has one social security number, one identification, one main home for residence, one automobile, etc, etc, there can be exceptions when someone has five cars and eight homes.  But the truth can be only one. I am unable to understand that there is any reason to believe that we need three bureaus doing exactly the same thing. They cannot improve their product if they are telling the truth, because like I said there is only one truth. OK now you wonder if by closing two of the three companies so many people will lose jobs etc., it may be well worth it! There may be another way to address the issue. Divide the entire country into three Geographic divisions and give one division to each company!

In addition to credit report the credit bureaus are creating a FICO score and giving it to the banks and other lending institutions. But they won't give the citizens the FICO score for free. As per law the citizens are entitled to get only the credit report for free. So what about the score?  We have to create a new law to force the credit bureaus to give the FICO score to the citizens for free along with the free credit report. Because when the bank or the lenders pull a credit report, that is what they get – credit report and FICO score. When the citizens try, they only get the report and NO score. Why, because we have no control over the credit bureaus? If I understand right, the law was created so that citizens could see exactly what the banks are seeing. Now that purpose is completely defeated it looks like. Banks can see the FICO score and citizens cannot. Is some department in Federal Government overseeing these companies or if many scams are going to come to light one day, suddenly like it did for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Do you wish to know one more joke? The website http://www.freecreditreport.com is tempting people like me to get us a "Credit score" from Experian for free. I tried to get mine and it turns out it is called Experian plus score and has nothing to do with the FICO score that Experian is giving the banks. So when I called my bank to inform that my score from Experian looks great, they laughed and said that they got a different score from Experian called FICO score. Why do we allow many different scores to float around in public? Is there no one to control? If the credit bureaus are reporting FICO score to banks and lenders and if they are forced to divulge that to the public along with the credit report, then there won't be any confusion, I think.

Thank you!

Murali Vanamamalai
Newark, Delaware