[brokentone]

The credit system is one of the most broken things in the US economy IMHO. It's a legal requirement / protected entity. One cannot legally get basic forms of financial instruments without existing in the system -- and if you have these financial instruments, you have no rights to limit your information sharing with these firms. This makes it nearly impossible to opt out of, and certainly impossible to choose which one you want to work with. As you've indicated, all of them are terrible and you have surprisingly little recourse to deal with issues or corrections. Until recent laws were passed, you were not even guaranteed to be able to request what information they kept on you.

This is one of few things that I would love to help correct as a business opportunity and a social good, but at the moment, the way the laws are structured makes an EXTREMELY high bar to get in, and these terribly flawed companies are highly protected.