Talk:Dun & Bradstreet/Archives/2015

Class Action Lawsuit Claims Intentional Damages to Small Businesses
Dun & Bradstreet has been accused in a class action lawsuit that "allege[s] that D&B manipulates small business credit scores by placing inaccurate information on their D&B reports, including phantom inquiries, non-existent debts, and slow pay experiences, and that DBCC uses that same false information to solicit small businesses, inducing them to purchase the credit-on-self product known as “CreditBuilder” for hundreds and/or thousands of dollars per year. The lawsuits further allege that DBCC intentionally misleads small businesses, in both written and telephone solicitations, into believing that it is D&B, in order to leverage the sale of the product, and that purchasing CreditBuilder is the only way to fix false or inaccurate information appearing on a business’s D&B credit report.  Plaintiffs seek damages for the alleged harm done to small business credit by the false information D&B publishes, and for the purchase price of CreditBuilder resulting from DBCC’s allegedly deceptive conduct." .

Started by a Washington small business called O&R Construction, the lawsuit has revealed how D&B's tactics are damaging thousands of small business across the country with their illegal practices. . Among other complaints in the lawsuit, D&B may be blocking small firms attempting to sell product to Walmart : "D&B creates a “sub-score” called the Supplier Evaluation Risk (“SER”) rating. Many large government agencies (e.g., the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs) and corporations(e.g., Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (“Wal-Mart”)), require that small businesses maintain a minimum SER score to do business with them. For instance, upon information and belief, Wal-Mart requires that its vendors maintain a SER score of at least six.  Thus, the SER score is of critical importance to small businesses seeking to do business with certain entities. D&B artificially lowers target small businesses’ SER ratings, improperly assigning them a rating of “High Risk of Financial Stress.”  D&B also threatens to lower target small businesses’ SER ratings.  This abuse of the SER rating wrongfully indicates that a target small business has a “high risk” of impending “financial stress” when, in truth, no such risk exists.Italic text {emphasis added]. . A failure in the overall credibility of D&B Business credit reports are that companies are allowed to enter their own financial data:  "Dun & Bradstreet will accept updates to a company’s information from a currently listed officer, principal of the business, or an individual authorized by the company’s management to provide information to Dun & Bradstreet." Thus, anyone can make up any financial report that they want - and apparently that includes D&B too. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.149.125.147 (talk) 00:39, 7 June 2015 (UTC)


 * While you're passion is clear, almost all of the information from the three paragraphs you've included come directly from one clearly non-neutral website: http://www.dandblitigation.com . On other wikipedia pages where you've added almost the exact text, the community has asked that we wait until the story is more newsworthy before including. I'm going to recommend we do the same thing here.