Barbara Huson

Dear Barbara,
My mother has one credit card through her credit union, primarily for the purpose of keeping up her credit history and to make on-line purchases. The bill is paid in full each month. She is a widow and is retired with a good pension from a state/government job. She has no outstanding debt — house and car are paid off and have been for many years. She recently applied for a home equity loan, but the lending institution refuses to pull any credit score except Experian credit score and Experian does not have a rating for her based on not enough recent debt history. We checked and her credit card history is not being reported to Experian. TransUnion and Equifax did receive the credit card history and they both list her with credit scores greater than 770. We requested her credit union report the credit card history to Experian, but they refused and said that they were only required to 2 of the 3 credit bureaus.

1) How can the credit union refuse to report her information to Experian if she personally has requested it to correct her credit history?
2) Does she have any rights that would require the lender to review more than just one credit report if there were known errors/missing information on the Experian report?
3) I know this will sound cynical, but this sounds like a follow the money situation. Does Experian charge a fee (or the highest fee of the three) to institutions that report information to them, so her credit union is avoiding them? Do they offer some incentive to the lenders that commit to only pulling their report?

Any suggestions on how to correct this in a timely manner, hopefully without opening up new credit cards and waiting for the months/years to establish a new history. Plus, is there a way to know ahead of time which credit card companies would report to all three bureaus?

Thank you for your help