The DS code is a Metro 2 question, but the duties behind it are FCRA duties. Section 623 (15 U.S.C. §1681s-2) is where furnisher accuracy lives — what it requires, who can enforce it, and why a verification record is the practical answer to most of it. This page is a plain-language map, not legal advice.
These run continuously, whether or not anyone complains.
A furnisher may not furnish information it knows or has reasonable cause to believe is inaccurate. Reporting DS on an account because a program is rumored — or leaving DS on after the enrollment ended — is exactly the shape of this violation.
A furnisher that regularly reports and learns information it furnished is not complete or accurate must promptly notify the bureau and provide the corrections. A lifecycle status change — enrolled, completed, dropped out — is a correction event.
Section 623(a) also carries the date-of-first-delinquency duty, identity-theft notification duties, and the direct-dispute rule (Regulation V §1022.43): a consumer can dispute directly with the furnisher, and the furnisher must investigate those too.
Governments only. Sections 623(c) and (d) bar private suits over the (a) duties — enforcement belongs to the CFPB, the FTC, the banking agencies, and state attorneys general. That is not the same as low stakes: those are the readers your audit file is written for.
These start the day a bureau forwards a consumer dispute — an ACDV through e-OSCAR — and they are privately enforceable.
On notice of a dispute from a consumer reporting agency, the furnisher must conduct an investigation with respect to the disputed information.
The investigation must review all relevant information the bureau passed along — the consumer’s dispute documents included, not just the furnisher’s own system notes.
Findings go back to the bureau within the FCRA dispute window (the 30-day period of §611, extendable only as the statute allows). Information found inaccurate, incomplete, or unverifiable must be modified, deleted, or permanently blocked.
“Why is my account coded as debt settlement?” is a dispute DS reporting will generate from its first cycle. The furnisher’s answer is its file: the enrollment record, the company, the dates, the evidence grade. ScrubHits evidence records are built to be that file — see the evidence standard and when DS is disputed.
Regulation V requires every furnisher to establish reasonable written policies and procedures regarding the accuracy and integrity of the information it furnishes, and to review and update them as necessary. Appendix E to Part 1022 lists what the regulators look for: internal controls, records retention, training, and periodic evaluation.
Furnished information has integrity when it is substantiated by the furnisher’s records at the time it is furnished, and furnished in a manner designed to minimize inaccuracies. A DS code with no verification record behind it is difficult to describe as substantiated. A DS code backed by a dated, graded evidence record is the definition, met.
Statutory references: FCRA §623, 15 U.S.C. §1681s-2; Regulation V, 12 C.F.R. Part 1022. This page summarizes the law for operational readers; it is not legal advice and does not create an attorney–client relationship.
No — §§623(c)–(d) reserve (a)-duty enforcement to government agencies. But the same facts usually arrive as a §623(b) dispute case, which is privately actionable, and as examination findings, which need no lawsuit at all.
The §623(b) investigation must complete within the §611 period — generally 30 days from the bureau’s receipt of the dispute (up to 45 in defined circumstances). The clock is shared with the bureau’s, so days spent hunting for evidence are days lost.
No. The duties remain the furnisher’s. What a verification service changes is the record: instead of an undocumented judgment call, the file holds a dated evidence record the duty can be shown to rest on.
Start with a mutual NDA and one file. We review the file you are about to transmit, hand back the corrections with the evidence behind each one, and you decide what reports.
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