Dun & Bradstreet’s Credibility Issues

Credibility Corp is owned by Dun & Bradstreet (D&B), a New Jersey-based credit reporting giant whose annual revenue is more than $1 billion. About four years ago, Credibility was spun off from the parent company.

Today, Credibility finds itself in a bit of hot water as a federal court upheld a motion to hear a lawsuit filed by O&R Construction, a licensed general contractor located in Oak Harbor, Washington (source).

At the heart of the matter is O&R’s accusation that Credibility is guilty of unfair and deceptive practices. O&R co-owner, Robyn Kolaitis, has been paying $69 per month to Credibility so that her company can monitor the financial information banks, vendors and others receive from D&B when they do inquiries on O&R.

First filed in 2012, the lawsuit alleges that an incorrect, negative D&B report motivated one of O&R’s suppliers to lower their credit limit by $8,000. This in itself, she says, is bad enough, but the cutback caused a ripple effect because they were suddenly not able to bid on several construction jobs – and they were accused of being slow bill payers and a “severe risk” of failure in the report.

Worse yet, the suit claims that Credibility and D&B are working together behind the scenes, doing things such as this that aggressively promote their credit-repair services. In this case, O&R alleges that instead of fixing the error, Credibility instead summoned a salesperson to attempt to sell her their monitoring service.

In addition to the credit-monitoring service, Credibility pays royalties to its parent company for access to its database, as well as for intellectual property.

Collectively, these things make Ms. Kolaitis continue to pay her monthly fee despite her pending suit against Credibility/D&B. “I am not sure what D&B will do to my business credit rating if O&R cancels the Credibility service,” she said recently.

Ms. Kolaitis doesn’t appear to be alone in her dissatisfaction of Credibility. Since January 2010, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has received more than 650 complaints against Dun & Bradstreet, with 139 of those specifically against Credibility.

Dun & Bradstreet has released a statement saying they have “no ownership or management control” over Credibility. Credibility had no comment on the lawsuit or the FTC complaints.