CREDIT: New Deal for the Harassed

For eight years a Pharmaceuticals salesman in New York City endured a Kafkaesque nightmare, applying for work to many firms and always being turned down, sometimes after he had been told that he was accepted. Reason: Atlanta's Retail Credit Co., one of the largest firms in the business of gathering and selling financial information about individual consumers, had been reporting erroneously that the salesman was dishonorably discharged from the Army. This was just one of many examples of damaging irresponsibility in the credit-investigation field uncovered in recent hearings before the Senate Subcommittee on Banking and Currency.

The thousands of computerized,...

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