January 21, 2022

Dun & Bradstreet Agrees to Refund Consumers and Reform Its Marketing and Credit Report Correction Practices

Lori Kalani, Bernard Nash

Cozen O'Connor

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Cozen O'Connor

The FTC reached a settlement with business credit reports provider Dun & Bradstreet, Inc. to resolve allegations that D&B used deceptive and unfair practices to sell its products to small and mid-sized businesses.
The complaint, filed concurrently with the proposed consent order, alleges that D&B failed to provide a clear and reliable process to fix errors in business credit reports, and that D&B marketed a product called CreditBuilder as helping businesses to improve their D&B reports by allowing them to add payment histories but, in reality, did not accept many payment history submissions and businesses’ credit reports did not improve. The complaint further alleges that D&B failed to notify customers of automatic renewal of the annual CreditBuilder subscription, among other things.
Under the terms of the consent order, D&B must refund CreditBuilder purchasers; allow current customers to cancel their subscriptions and obtain refunds; and create processes and procedures to promptly investigate and correct disputed credit report information, notify businesses of the results of its investigation, and provide free access to the revised information. Additionally, D&B will clearly disclose the likelihood of accepting payment history information in its CreditBuilder marketing, among other things.

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DISCLAIMER: Because of the generality of this update, the information provided herein may not be applicable in all situations and should not be acted upon without specific legal advice based on particular situations.