Equifax Gross Negligence/Incompetence

[FiveOhFour]

I filed a dispute on 8/15/17 with equifax because they did not update my sears card account to remove the late payment that I know sears sent them because the Sears Executive office assistant and Citibank worked with me to get the late payment removed and sent me copies of the physical mail updates they sent them along with the electronic updates. As of today that dispute is still pending and still shows an estimated completion date of 8/23/2017. Their twitter team was working with me and said they’d investigate and get back to me, that was in November, now they ignore me entirely, they never got back to me. I messaged them from a backup account and got a reply within minutes asking how they could help me, I didn’t even give them my name but explaining the situation was enough for them to start ignoring me on that account as well. Why are these agencies so incompetent?

TransUnion only halfway deleted the late payment, so I filed a dispute with them, which they immediately resolved by denied the dispute and putting a note that info was disputed and it meets the FCRA. But I had Citi chew them out so they fixed it, but they left the note that I dispute the account, so now that the account is finally clear it looks like I have an issue and want them to include something negative on it :

[Anonymous]

Equifax is horrible.

You could try filing a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

[RobertEG]

You can file a complaint with the CFPB or bring your own civil action against the CRA for their failure to take reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy of the information in their files, as required under FCRA 607(d).

HOwever, civil action against the CRAs normally place the burden on the consumer to establish that the CRA action was unreasonable.

If you are considering civil action against the CRA, I suggest you read the following article for a legal discussion of the burden that is faced in such actions:

Jennifer Cuculich Who Bears the Burden of Proof Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, 15 U.S.C. s1681e(b) - Consumers May Bear the Biggest Burden in This Climate of Heightened National Security, 14 Loy. Consumer L. Rev. 305 (2002).

Available at: http://lawecommons.luc.edu/lclr/vol14/iss3/3

[FiveOhFour]

I missed this reply, thank you very much. They’ve yet to do it, and now Transunion has failed to add a trade line and they reverted back to showing negative info for an account that they’d corrected 2 months before. At this point it’s a matter of principle for me.

[Anonymous]

If EQ doesn't update my info CFPB is who I'll be contacting real tired of them not updating and removing invalid items.

[Anonymous]

Good luck! EQ is Reporting our BK13 as a BK7 on DH’s report. He has filed 5-6 disputes while including the BK13 discharge paperwork every time. He also filed a complaint with the CFPB. It has gone nowhere.

He needs this fixed because the BK will drop off in June 2018 rather than sticking around for another 2 years!

It was the same on mine but I called and called until I got someone to miraculously take action. He hasn’t had such luck yet.

[RobertEG]

The CRA may, after being formally contacted by the CFPB, be awakened and correct their bad prior actions.

However, unless the CFPB actually inititiates civil action on behalf of the consumer or obtains a settlement agreement with the CRA that imposes agreed sanctions, the consumer will not receive award of actual or punitive civil damages.

Both the CFPB and FTC reserve actual litigation for cases that involve multiple affected consumers or repeated violations, and thus getting them to foot the time and expense of litigation is usually not going to happen.

A consumer can initiate their own civil action against a CRA for violation of the FCRA if the violation is either willful or negligent.

See FCRA 6516 and 617.  Negligent noncompliance can result in the award of actual damages plus legal and court fees, while a showing of willful noncompliance can also result in the award of punitive damages.

If you goal is only to slap the CRA on the wrist, then the CFPB route may satisfy your wrath.

However, if you also seek $, then bringing your own civil action will likely be the route.

[FiveOhFour]

Thanks this is helpful, I have a family friend who’s a lawyer that’s a bit bored after closing his practice so I may enlist him to help me here, then if we win the case my legal fees will be covered and if we don’t my legal fees don’t exist.

I’m not so much out for money as I’m out for blood, and if money is the only thing that hurts these companies than I guess I am out for money.

I don’t know if I’m more astounded at Equifax having a investigation that hasn’t completed a year later and the fact that they’ve seemingly blacklisted my name or all customers complaining of such issues. They told me via their twitter customer service that I should expect a phone call after they forward my complaint to the right people, that never happened and they stopped replying at all. Months later they reply asking how they can help me, I explain the situation and they go back to ignoring me with no reply for months. I create a new account and message them seeking help and they reply within minutes, I pretend I need help correcting my name on my report and they say they’re happy to help, then after explaining the actual situation they ignore me on the new account and suddenly don’t reply so quickly/ever again.

Transunion on the other hand was sent the corrected info from sears/CBNA on the same day the other 2 were, Experian deleted the late payments, every trace of it, it within 36 hours. Transunion didn’t so I file a dispute and they quickly deleted the “worst payment status: 60 days late” entry but left the portion about the number of times 30/60/90 days late, but at least it no longer appeared in the derogatory account section of my report and the months from 2012 that were late showed as no data instead of showing 30/60 days like before. I file a dispute to correctly delete all the traces of the negative info and they say sorry the info was confirmed, but get this, within my next couple of months reports I notice they not only didn’t delete the remaining negative info but they went back to reporting the account as if i had a 60 day late payment, all the data they’d removed was back and the account was back in the derogatory accounts section of my reporting. Another dispute yielded no results. this affects my mothers report and my own, as I added her as an authorized user, which is the other thing both Transunion and equifax neglected to do, they never put the authorized user update on her report. Despite trying to dispute that and both mailing and faxing (as customer service on the phone told me to) a request to add a trade line attached to a letter from CBNA/Sears stating that the person in question is an AU, which looks much Like the copy they sent me of the similar request they sent both CRA’s on my behalf, which is worded much like the request they initially sent electronically immediately after adding her as an AU, which I did immediately after the late payments were removed by CBNA.

Only Experian removed the late payments and added the authorized user and they did so blazing fast. I’m sure people have had bad experiences with Experian as well but right now I’m hating alll but them.


Luckily I have an immense amount of supporting documents so proving my case shouldn’t be too hard

[Anonymous]

Good luck! I hope you get them.

[FiveOhFour]

Ok bizarre twist, I’m in the process of starting a civil case against TU & Eq, for continuing to report incorrect late payments and claiming they verified and in the case of EQ having an outstanding dispute close to a year later.

Plot twist, Sears/Citi just “upgraded” this charge account from 1993 to a credit card, I haven’t yet confirmed if this will force the cleaning of the account the CRA’s have failed to correct or not, WalletHub notified me that an account has been added and an account has dropped off my report, so viewing my TU report through their site at least shows no trace of the charge account, I can’t tell if the account was actually deleted and replaced with an almost identical account that simply now says credit card instead of charge card, or if the details were just changed and there’s a high chance the incorrect data is still there, I can’t view that far back on my report on TU’s site, and haven’t had a chance to pull it up on TU's dispute site to check, but if they literally wiped the account off and replaced the data does that nullify my case despite the CRA’s never actually correcting that account ?