ProPublica: “…The timing of the drops at TransUnion and Experian coincides with the Trump administration’s dismantling of the CFPB. In February 2025, Russell Vought, a White House official who oversaw sweeping cuts across federal agencies, took control of the CFPB as acting director. He quickly ordered a stop to  nearly all agency work. Under his leadership, the CFPB has attempted to fire most of its staff, frozen investigations and dropped enforcement actions, including against TransUnion. One of the CFPB’s new lawyers leading the pullback on enforcement represented Experian for years before joining the administration. The credit bureaus “want to do as little as possible,” said Chi Chi Wu, director of consumer reporting at the National Consumer Law Center, which is a plaintiff in a lawsuit that has so far blocked some of the administration’s dismantling efforts. “The thing that is making them do any kind of effort is a lawsuit or a regulator, and now we don’t have the regulator,” Wu said.  In statements to ProPublica, the credit bureaus said that many complaints are illegitimate, including a large volume filed by credit repair organizations that charge customers to challenge negative information on their reports. Experian said in a statement that some of those companies “mislead consumers into believing they can remove accurate information,” adding that it investigates “all legitimate” complaints. The company did not respond to specific questions about its decline in relief. Third parties are allowed to submit complaints on behalf of consumers if they disclose their involvement and get permission. Federal regulators have acknowledged that bad actors exist, but the CFPB and a House subcommittee found that the credit bureaus’ systems for identifying third-party involvement were overly broad and dismissed legitimate concerns. Asked about the decline in relief, TransUnion said it recently changed its processes to handle third-party complaints and now redirects those with insufficient documentation to “a more appropriate” internal channel for review. For years, the CFPB’s complaint system has served as a public middleman: forwarding consumer issues to the bureaus, requiring responses and publishing data showing how companies handled them.  But the companies have successfully lobbied the Trump administration to start steering some consumers away from the transparent process and toward their internal systems…”