Happy December one and all, and I hope all of you have a great holiday season.
Currently credit reports from the major bureaus are available only in English. The reports are hard enough to interpret even for English speakers, so not providing them in at least some of the other major languages spoken in the U.S.–Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Russian–seems, shall we say, a bit unfair.
I am well aware that a lot of my friends hold the belief that English is spoken in this country, so you’d better learn English. I’m really not getting into that debate at this point. My response to this sentiment is that NO ONE CHOOSES TO HAVE A CREDIT REPORT. Whether rich or poor, English-speaking or not, black, yellow, brown or white, NO ONE CHOOSES TO HAVE THE CREDIT BUREAUS COMPILE CREDIT REPORTS ON THEM. So, given that we get no choice whatsoever in whether we even have a credit report, shouldn’t the bureaus provide credit reports in more than just English for the many consumers for whom English is not their first, nor their best, language? Seems fair to me, as a person needs to be able to understand his or her credit report to fix any errors in it.
So, if you or your friends are having troubles with the bureaus because you cannot get a credit report in your native language, yes, we are looking into these cases.
And I am more than aware of the irony of writing this blog post in English. Perhaps some good people out there will help translate.
Thanks for reading.