First edition, August 2026. The Kim Law Firm publishes this analysis twice a year; the next edition covers the twelve months to 31 December 2026 and is due in February 2027.
Americans filed 5,867,288 complaints about their credit reports in the twelve months to 30 June 2026. Nine hundred and forty-seven of them ended with any money changing hands.
That is not a rounding error in the data. It is roughly one complaint in every 6,200. The figure comes from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s own public complaint database, which records how every complaint was resolved.
It also cross-checks against the agency’s own reporting. The CFPB’s Consumer Response Annual Report for 2025, published in March 2026, states that companies closed 0.02% of credit and consumer reporting complaints with monetary relief. That figure covers a different twelve months and was calculated by the agency rather than by us, and it lands in the same place.
What happened to the rest
| Outcome | Complaints | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Closed with an explanation | 3,767,232 | 64.2% |
| Closed with non-monetary relief | 1,975,190 | 33.7% |
| Still in progress | 119,969 | 2.0% |
| Untimely response | 3,950 | 0.07% |
| Closed with monetary relief | 947 | 0.016% |
The middle row is the one worth pausing on. A third of complaints produced non-monetary relief, which in this context usually means the disputed entry was corrected, updated or deleted. That is a real outcome and for many people it is the only outcome they wanted. But it arrives without compensation for whatever the error cost in the meantime — the higher interest rate, the declined application, the job that went to someone else.
Who the complaints name
The database names 2,081 separate companies. Three of them account for almost all of it. These are the eleven most complained about, in order.
| Company | Complaints | Share of total |
|---|---|---|
| TransUnion | 2,014,926 | 34.3% |
| Equifax | 1,905,892 | 32.5% |
| Experian | 1,694,950 | 28.9% |
| LexisNexis | 30,425 | 0.5% |
| CBC Companies | 30,094 | 0.5% |
| Capital One | 11,128 | 0.2% |
| Fidelity National Information Services | 6,554 | 0.1% |
| Resurgent Capital Services | 6,280 | 0.1% |
| Citibank | 4,943 | 0.08% |
| JPMorgan Chase | 4,724 | 0.08% |
| Bank of America | 4,708 | 0.08% |
The big three together draw 5,615,768 complaints, or 95.7 percent of the category. That is the expected result and it is not the interesting part of the table.
The interesting part is what sits below them once you set the banks aside. Strip out the lenders, who appear here because they furnish information rather than because they compile reports, and what is left is a second tier of companies that hold files on you and that almost nobody has heard of.
| Company | Complaints | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| LexisNexis | 30,425 | Compiles consumer reports sold to insurers, landlords and employers |
| CBC Companies | 30,094 | Consumer reporting and background screening |
| Resurgent Capital Services | 6,280 | Debt buyer, reports purchased debts to the bureaus |
| Early Warning Services | 4,506 | Runs the database banks check before opening an account |
| Portfolio Recovery Associates | 3,987 | Debt buyer |
| Encore Capital Group | 3,844 | Debt buyer |
These companies hold files on ordinary people who have no idea the files exist, and who therefore never check them until something goes wrong.
What people are complaining about
| Issue | Complaints | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Incorrect information on your report | 3,485,415 | 59.4% |
| Improper use of your report | 1,265,344 | 21.6% |
| Problem with a company’s investigation into an existing problem | 1,067,077 | 18.2% |
| Problem with fraud alerts or security freezes | 19,938 | 0.3% |
| Unable to get your credit report or credit score | 17,238 | 0.3% |
Three complaints in five say the same thing: the information is wrong. A further one in five concerns the investigation that was supposed to fix it.
Where the complaints come from
| State | Complaints |
|---|---|
| Texas | 931,713 |
| Florida | 858,901 |
| California | 534,010 |
| Georgia | 451,850 |
| New York | 300,050 |
| Illinois | 256,150 |
| North Carolina | 208,963 |
| Pennsylvania | 193,255 |
| Alabama | 171,069 |
| New Jersey | 168,930 |
Pennsylvania ranks eighth in the country and New Jersey tenth.
Methodology
All figures are drawn from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s public Consumer Complaint Database, filtered to the product category “Credit reporting or other personal consumer reports” and to complaints received between 1 July 2025 and 30 June 2026. Totals are as recorded by the agency at the time of extraction on 9 August 2026 and will shift slightly as complaints still in progress are closed. Company names appear as the CFPB records them; where a corporate group files under several names, entries are not combined. The database is open to anyone at consumerfinance.gov and the query above can be reproduced in full.
The 0.02% cross-check comes from the CFPB’s Consumer Response Annual Report for 2025, published March 2026, which covers calendar year 2025 rather than the period used here.
A complaint is an allegation, not a finding. Complaint volume reflects a company’s size as well as its conduct, and the three nationwide credit bureaus hold files on essentially every adult in the country. Banks and lenders appear in the table above because they furnish information to the bureaus, not because they compile consumer reports.
This is a twice-yearly series. Each edition re-runs the same query over the preceding twelve months, so figures between editions are comparable. Journalists and researchers are welcome to reproduce the tables with attribution; the underlying query is described above and can be run by anyone.
When a dispute does not work
The Fair Credit Reporting Act gives you the right to dispute information on your report, and it requires both the credit bureau and the company that supplied the information to investigate. Most disputes are handled this way and never need anything more.
The data above describes what happens at the next stage — where a dispute has been made properly and the information is still wrong. At that point the question stops being administrative. The Act provides for damages where those duties are ignored, and the fact that fewer than a thousand complaints in almost six million produced a payment is a reasonable measure of how rarely that happens through the complaints process alone.
If that is where you are, these pages set out the next step for the bureau involved: TransUnion, Equifax and Experian. If the report that caused the problem was a tenant screen or a background check rather than a credit file, start with background check errors.
The Kim Law Firm represents consumers in credit reporting matters under the FCRA. Admitted in Pennsylvania and New Jersey; available to appear pro hac vice in other federal courts. Get a free case review or call 855-996-6342 — you pay nothing unless we win.