Me and my mom sat down 3 years ago and each got our free reports with no problems. We haven't bothered doing it again since then until I signed up for myfico. I signed up for the free trial, got my free score and free report, and all is well on mine.
So then I sat down with my mom to help her get hers. Myfico kept rejecting her request. We thought it was a debit card problem and called to get help. She was told by myfico that the address she was trying to use doesn't match the address in the Equifax report and that we needed to call Equifax and have it corrected.
OK no problem we thought we will just call, verify my moms identity and bam we will have her report. Nope. Equifax asked her to verify her id by her SSN, maiden name, who she has loans with and what the amounts are. He then said he had verified her identity so she asked what the address on her report was and he said he could not access her report and that she could buy it for 19.99 if she wanted to. She said she as allowed one free report annually and asked for it by mail and he told her again she had to buy it for 19.99. (I'm pretty sure that's illegal)
Figuring we had verified her identity with Equifax we tried again at myfico and annualcreditreport and she can't access any reports through any bureaus. She will mail in her paperwork soon to have a report mailed to her but until then what causes this kind of mess? She moved once since she got her report 3 years ago but I live with her and our new address works for me. Is it possible this is just a simple error or this more likely to be a big problem like identity theft or something?