WARNING: Defective product on the market... YOU!

Credit has to be earned much like credibility. Unlike other products, you can't purchase it, nor do you have a choice of refusing to deal with the company that produces the product.

Finding out your credit is erroneous is like finding out a product you purchased is defective. Time and time again, you try to fix the problem but your many attempts to repair the product fail. Your frustration over your inability to get the product repaired leads you to your browser one day, where you type in the product's name using key words like "trouble," "problems," "lawsuits," "nightmares," etc., and suddenly thousands of pages come up to view. You find yourself reading story after story, about victim after victim, all having the same complaints and same malfunctioning product that you have.

You're stunned, but you recognize that you are not alone and what's worse, it appears that you're powerless to change it and stop the product from being sold to other unsuspecting consumers.

If any product (other than credit) had this many problems, surely something would be done about it...right? There would be warnings to the public and we would have a choice to stop purchasing the defective product. But therein lies our biggest problem -the product they are selling and making a bundle on -our identity, is faulty and the burden to ensure the known substandard product isn't sold until it's fixed, is placed on us, not the corporations who are profiting from it.

Mine, by far, is not the worst nightmare story out there -not by a long shot. Rather, my complaints are quite typical and even representative of what appears to be a systemic problem within the industry. Unless we bring our stories to the forefront, warning the public and shedding light on the defects of the system to our legislators and governmental agencies that can step in to help us, these corporations will continue to sell, and profit from, this known defective product -without any accountability.

I can't help but wonder how we found ourselves in the role of a quality control expert that requires us to work endless, unpaid hours just to ensure the product they are selling -US, is of good quality. Even more ludicrous is the fact that we actually have to purchase the product ourselves, before we can fix it. Our own credit scores are not free! Since we are essentially working for free -wouldn't our role as quality inspectors be more effective if we at least received the product they're selling for free? Isn't it asking a little too much of us to work for free repairing their product (our own information) and be required to buy it too?

Considering the number of hours we find ourselves working without pay -there might just be some labor laws being overlooked as well.