Hi all - hoping someone has some advice for me here. Long story short, I'm trying to apply for a mortgage but Equifax still has one of my accounts listed as "Consumer Disputes - Reinvestigation in Progress" stemming from a dispute that was completed over a month ago. After 6 separate attempts over the past 2 weeks, they are evidently unable to simply remove the remark, even though they have confirmed that the account is NOT in a dispute status and tell me that it will be removed within 48 hours each time I call. As a result, I haven't been able to get my mortgage application through as the lender still sees a pending dispute. Here's the detail:
- Nov 25, 2019 - I initiated a dispute online through MyEquifax.com for a closed account that was being reported incorrectly in my credit file (worth noting that it is reported correctly on both TU and EX - only EQ is reporting incorrect information).
- Dec 10, 2019 - I received the results of the "investigation". They made some arbirary changes to the dates that didn't even address the problem I reported, but regardless, I decided not to pursue the matter any further since I didn't want to have to wait for another bogus "investigation" to conclude before appyling for a mortgage... Per the explaination document I received for this case, dated December 10th, the investigation was officially closed.
- Jan 17 - I mortgage lender pulls my credit file and says I have an account still in dispute status for EQ. I refreshed my report and noticed that the account I disputed back in November still says "consumer disputes - reinvestigation in progress". I called customer support, explained the issue, and the agent confirmed that I was correct - there was no investigation underway, and that the account would be corrected in 48 hours.
- Jan 22 - I refreshed my report again expecting to see the change, and noticed that the account had still not been updated, so I called again. The agent told me that the account was supposed to have been updated, but it wasn't for some unknown reason (suggested a technical glitch), and that he would take care of it within 48 hours.
- Jan 24 - I refreshed my report again and the account still had not been corrected. I called again and asked to speak to a supervisor as I need to have this issue taken care of in order to apply for a mortgage. I was assured this time by the supervisor that it would be corrected within 48 hours.
- Jan 29 - I refreshed my report yet again and still the account has not been updated. I called customer support for the fourth time. I was again told that I was correct - there is no pending dispute or investigation, and that it would be corrected within 48 hours. I explained that this is the same thing I was told the past three times. He said he would personally make the change while I waited. He put my on hold, and after a ccouple of minutes I was transferred to a customer satisfaction survey and the call was disconnected thereafter. I called back immediately and explained what happened. The new agent said he would put a supervisor on the line and asked me to hold. Same exact thing happened - I was transferred to a survey and the call was disconnected. At this point I gave up in defeat.
Each time I've called, I can see in the Dispute section of MyEquifax.com that they had opened a case and closed it on the same day. The explaination document for each case says that the account has been corrected, but they do not show anything changing (see the screenshots linked below).
I've already lost out on a couple of houses that we really liked since this is preventing me from getting preapproved. It's baffling to me that they can't get this straightened out, but obviously they are not taking it seriously at all. What should I do?? I would hate to have to start sending them letters, etc as this process could take months, when this should be so easy to resolve over the phone... I've filed a complaint with the BBB, but not holding my breathe that it will do anything...
Screenshots:
- List of cases in the dispute center. The first one (opened 11/25, closed 12/10) was the original dispute for incorrect account information. The rest of them are all from when I called to have the "under investigation" flag removed (as you can see, the dates correspond w/ each phone call described above, starting Jan 17).
- Results from the latest case (Jan 29). They all say some version of this ("explaination has been deleted" and/or "remark has been removed" and/or "account information has been updated"), but there is no change whatsoever to the account information below displayed below this line.
