Consumer complaint received 2020-05-10
Company: EQUIFAX, INC.
State: CA
Product: Credit reporting, credit repair services, or other personal consumer reports
Sub-product: Credit reporting
Issue: Problem with fraud alerts or security freezes

Complaint:
The root of my complaint is that fact the Equifax today does not provide a way for consumers to freeze their account over the phone - if those consumers do not have auto loans or mortgages ( only credit card accounts opened ). Both XXXX and XXXX were able to efficiently and quickly resolve my issue, freezing my credit account. 

Equifax 's system has a protocol used both in phone and via online tools to verify my identity through information that has no association to my identity ( namely auto loans that I did not undertake ). I consider this to be unethical and grossly irresponsible business practice by Equifax. This is potentially also a violation of my right to freeze my credit account past a notification via phone in a timely manner. 

Especially given Equifax was the company to have a data breach affecting millions of consumers, I'd expect them to be more thoughtful of undertaking a serious consumer responsibility. 




More details : I recently received 7 hard inquiries recently on my credit account for auto loans ( 3 on 2 days ago and 4 of them today ). This is lot of fraudulent inquiries. This was potentially related to a data breach my employer XXXX recently had, where employee identity information was stolen. 

Given that there was an active fraudster out there attempting to walk away with a car under my name, freezing my credit accounts in a timely manner was crucial to preventing further damage. 

I was able to freeze my credit accounts efficiently and quickly with answering several basic identity verification questions with both XXXX and XXXX. However, Equifax despite calling several agents and speaking to the supervisor for hours, provided no way for me to freeze my credit account. The only way they provided was to mail in documents to a PO box . Efficiently meaning that I would have to wait weeks before I had any chance of freezing my credit account. 

On top of this, the addresses provided by the supervisor to mail my critical identity documents was very different to the one that both of agents provided earlier. He indicated that this was the correct new address after COVID. 

Both of these reflect poor business practices and training within the ranks. 

The core of their problem seemed to be that they couldn't verify my identity. Unlike XXXX and XXXX, Equifax 's protocol had an additional set of 4 identity verification questions that were all about car loans. Having never taken a car loan in my life, I had to answer " none of the above '' for all of these questions. 

According to their protocol, me never having had a car loan or mortgage before prevents me from having any way to verify my identify over phone. This they feel justifies them denying me my civil right to freeze my credit account over the phone. 

Their online tools on both their website and mobile apps were also asking the same questions about my non-existent auto loans. Information unrelated to my identity in any way. 

I consider this grossly irresponsible handling of setting an identify verification protocol severely affects consumers ( without auto-loans or mortgages, a large demographic ) in a time of need.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation