Consumer complaint received 2023-09-25
Company: EQUIFAX, INC.
State: NV
Product: Credit reporting or other personal consumer reports
Sub-product: Credit reporting
Issue: Incorrect information on your report
Sub-issue: Account information incorrect

Complaint:
OVERVIEW : My wife and I have never missed a payment on anything ever. Until the inaccurate information posted by XXXX XXXX XXXX  was filed to our credit report, our credit scores were regularly in the XXXX 's with sizable income > XXXX per year. We always pay off our monthly credit cards in full, have no car loans, student or medical debt. We have a mortgage, a solar panel system loan and that's it. We have cash reserves that cover the mortgage balance and the solar loan but choose to invest this cash elsewhere. We are not a credit risk. And yet due to this inaccurate information our credit scores dipped into the high XXXX 's and we have had to recently withdraw attempts to purchase a new home. The incorrect information posted to our credit report is egregious and inflammatory and inaccurate information of this magnitude should be removed as it is malicious. 

HISTORY : In XXXX  we purchased a primary residence in XXXX, XXXX. XXXX XXXX XXXX  bought the loan and became the loan servicer. Automatic mortgage and property tax withdrawals were set up and were never missed. 

In XX/XX/XXXXXXXX  we temporarily moved to our second home in XXXX XXXX, XXXX  due to Covid ( our child was XXXX XXXX and we needed to move to a lower risk/population density location ). We rented out our XXXX property and paid for mail forwarding. We never received any notice from XXXX XXXX  at our new XXXX XXXX address, despite getting many confirmations of mail address changes from our primary financial institution ( XXXX XXXX  - thank-you XXXX for doing your job well ). In XXXX of XXXX  we moved to XXXX XXXX, XXXX  and sold our XXXX XXXX secondary residence. Again we paid for mail forwarding to our new XXXX XXXX address and received address updates from XXXX XXXX  and many other service providers- as is typical when one pays for mail forwarding notifications. Again, we received no new statements or notices from XXXX XXXX. In XXXX of XXXX, we sold our XXXX residence and paid off the XXXX Mortgage to XXXX XXXX. We no longer own the property and the loan is paid off in full. 

THE ERROR/PROBLEM In XX/XX/XXXX, in spite of regular and continued auto payments to our mortgage, we got a notification that our credit score had plummeted and upon investigation discovered XXXX XXXX XXXX claimed we had missed a mortgage payment. After calling the bank, they shared with us our ESCROW PAYMENT had changed by about {$35.00} and thus our auto-pays were short by that amount. In the attached statements, it's even more egregious that as monthly payments continued to process automatically, XXXX XXXX  began to label them as unapplied credits. How on earth can there be unapplied credits but unpaid mortgage? 

We did not receive any formal attempts to contact us about the property tax escrow change ( no letter mail, no email or confirmed calls ). When we eventually spoke to their management, we shared that the mortgage payment never changed and was always paid on time, and that the escrow payment was a separate payment that wasnt even due yet for taxes. However, they claimed their internal policy was that both payments constitute a mortgage payment and they would not remove the missed payment from our record. 

We are arguing that this was an extreme and malicious approach to a mild and easily solvable situation that originated due to their error. In no world was our mortgage payment late. And their lack of attempts to make us aware of the change was underwhelming. And at the end of the day the FACTS are inaccurate. We had an approx {$70.00} miss on our escrow payment. But we were not late on any mortgage payment and to say we were is a complete fallacy.

Company response to consumer: Closed with non-monetary relief