Trump’s CFPB Drops Case Against Repeat Offender TransUnion For Bait-and-Switch Subscription Hustle TransUnion deceived millions into signing up for hard to cancel monthly subscriptions
By Christine Chen Zinner
Last week, the CFPB dropped 5 pending enforcement cases against companies that swindled or gouged consumers that show the Trump administration siding with broligarchy billionaires like Elon Musk over everyday people. In total, these CFPB cases were pursuing billions of dollars from these financial scofflaws for people who are just trying to save money, buy a house, and pay for school without getting ripped off. On Friday, the Trump CFPB dropped a sixth case, this time against TransUnion for repeatedly deceiving millions of people into signing up for paid monthly subscriptions for credit monitoring services.
TransUnion is one of the three largest U.S. credit reporting agencies and collects credit information on nearly 200 million people. It even bragged on its website that it had a credit profile on “nearly every credit-active consumer in the United States.” TransUnion and its credit score can determine how expensive your mortgage is, whether you get a credit card, the interest rate on your auto loan, or even whether your rental application is accepted.
For years, TransUnion duped millions of people into subscriptions that cost them hundreds of dollars by luring them to click on banners that said “GET YOUR CREDIT SCORE” on popular websites such as Amazon. Federal law requires TransUnion to provide people with one free credit report annually. But when people clicked on the free credit score advertisement and filled out the TransUnion form, the company tricked them into surrendering their credit card information for a purported verification process to get the free credit score. What people didn’t realize was that they were actually signing up for subscription credit monitoring that would cost $9.99 to $24.99 each month ($120 to $300 annually) and were difficult to cancel.
In 2017, the CFPB settled charges with TransUnion for these shady practices, and TransUnion agreed to stop tricking people and to pay $13.9 million in restitution for customers that had been duped and $3 million in civil money penalties. But TransUnion continued to ignore the order because giving up the free credit score-subscription bait and switch would reduce revenue. TransUnion senior executive John Danaher instructed staff to eliminate an opt-in checkbox that would have simply allowed people to choose to sign up for and knowingly consent to extra charges, which led to millions of enrollments. Millions of $120 to $300 annual subscription fees generate a lot of revenue.
In 2022, the CFPB filed an enforcement order against both TransUnion and John Danaher for flouting the 2017 order. TransUnion had continued to profit from tricking millions of people into signing up for hard to cancel subscription services. Businesses should not be allowed to turn a profit by swindling people into unwanted subscriptions. Trump has said the CFPB has wrongly gone after “some very good people,” so he dropped the case against Danaher and TransUnion. Maybe Trump thinks it’s a very good trait to trick people out of hundreds of dollars a year. The real question is, why doesn’t he think the good people that got fleeced by TransUnion deserve protection?