Your Credit Report Dispute Is Half as Likely to Get Fixed as It Was in 2024. At Experian, It's 1 in 9.

You found something wrong on your credit report and filed a dispute. Two years ago, at two of the three bureaus, the odds they’d actually change something were better than even.

Not anymore. At Experian it’s now about one in nine.

We counted this ourselves out of the CFPB’s public complaint database, which was last updated on September 27 and holds just over 18 million records. Same eight months each year, January through August. Same category, credit reporting. Then we compared how often each bureau closed a complaint with relief, meaning something on your file moved, against closing with an explanation, meaning it wrote back and changed nothing.

In 2024, TransUnion gave relief on 87.8 percent of the credit reporting complaints it closed. Equifax, 64.7 percent. Experian, 26.3 percent.

In 2026: TransUnion 40.6 percent. Equifax 41.4 percent. Experian 11.3 percent.

All three got worse. Two of them cut their own fix rate by more than half.

Volume went the other way. Those same eight months brought the three bureaus 1.27 million credit reporting complaints in 2024 and 4.22 million this year. More than triple the complaints, roughly half the relief.

Give them their fair point first. A chunk of that flood is credit repair shops filing in bulk, not people like you. True. But all three sit in the same flood, and one of them fixes things at 11 percent while the other two sit at 41. The tide doesn’t explain the gap.

Now the number nobody puts in a press release. Money has stopped moving almost entirely. Across roughly 1.13 million closed credit reporting complaints this year, Experian paid out on 89. TransUnion, on two. Equifax, on none.

ProPublica reported in March that Experian’s relief rate collapsed through 2025, and quoted the National Consumer Law Center’s Chi Chi Wu on the reason: “The thing that is making them do any kind of effort is a lawsuit or a regulator, and now we don’t have the regulator.”

So the verdict is easy. Filing through the bureau’s web form and waiting is a coin flip at two of them and much worse than that at the third.

Don’t stop there. Dispute with the furnisher too, meaning whoever reported the bad line: the card issuer, the collector, the lender. The CFPB tells you to send those “in writing, using certified mail,” and says furnishers “generally must investigate and respond to your dispute within 30 days.” Keep the receipt with the date stamped on it. That date starts the clock, and it’s the first thing a lawyer asks for later.

Pull all three reports, not one. You just saw that where the error lives decides your odds.

If the investigation comes back saying the line is accurate and you know it isn’t, ask in writing for a statement of dispute to be added to your file. It’s a weak tool. It’s also free, and it sits on the report the next lender reads.

Our credit score tool shows what one corrected line is worth in points. The credit cards hub and the best card offers are the next stop once your file is clean.

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