Consumer complaint received 2022-10-31
Company: EQUIFAX, INC.
State: CA
Product: Credit reporting, credit repair services, or other personal consumer reports
Sub-product: Credit reporting
Issue: Problem with a credit reporting company's investigation into an existing problem
Sub-issue: Investigation took more than 30 days

Complaint:
We were on a XXXX forbearance for our mortgage loan since the middle of the XXXX pandemic until XX/XX/2022. Our loan is serviced by XXXX. When the forbearance ended, we made all payments necessary to get us up to date on our loan. At that point, we were to resume regular monthly payments as we had before the forbearance started. Prior to the start of the forbearance, we had always kept our account on monthly autopay. After the forbearance ended, I logged into our account to ensure that we were once again on autopay. We had never had any issues with autopay in the past. Autopay should have resumed in XX/XX/2022, and because we had never had any issues with it, I had no reason to be concerned or feel the need to check up on it. 

Unfortunately, on XX/XX/2022, as I was doing my monthly reconciliation for XXXX, I noticed there was too much money in our checking account. It was at this time that I realized the autopay draft with XXXX for XXXX had not taken place. I immediately logged into my account and saw that we were in fact on autopay and yet the debit did not take place as it should have. I immediately made a manual payment and contacted customer service to make a complaint and talked to an agent named XXXX XXXX. I told XXXX I could send her a screenshot ( Screenshot A ) of what I saw on my screen to show that our account is in fact on autopay despite the debit not taking place. XXXX acknowledged that something was awry with the system and therefore she refunded the late fees ( XXXX XXXX ). 

Since then the technical issues with XXXX 's autopay system have NOT been resolved. Every month since then, I have had to make a point to make manual payments to our account despite the fact that our online account profile shows us on autopay. The automatic draft did not take place in XXXX either, but I decided to wait and see if this was a fluke and then XXXX came and again the autopay again did not take place. I called customer service again to complain and spoke to an agent named XXXX XXXX. XXXX acknowledged that the account was indeed on autopay. She could see that it was on autopay, yet she didn't understand why the auto payment did not take place. I had XXXX make a note of this recurrent oddity in my account. She helped me to make a manual payment for XXXX and she advised that I delete my autopay information and start from scratch and set up autopay again even though I was already on autopay. She suggested that setting autopay up again from scratch might " reset '' the system so that the auto payments would take place as they should. 
Meanwhile, XXXX reported us over 30 days delinquent for XX/XX/2022, which was when all our problems withautopay started. This delinquency has forced my personal credit score to take a serious hit. Prior to this incident, my credit score was over XXXX, but it is now lower by over XXXX points as a result of this erroneous delinquency in XXXX. I was not able to intervene in XX/XX/2022 to make a manual payment to avoid being delinquent that month because that was the first instance of the problem with XXXX 's system, a problem which I was wholly unaware of at the time and had no reason to be aware of. It was completely unfair of XXXX to report us as delinquent for XXXX since it was a failure of their system payment processes that caused us to be delinquent. 

On XX/XX/XXXX, I spoke to a supervisor named XXXX XXXX to complain about being reported delinquent for XXXX. XXXX told me over the phone that after a forbearance ends, the online system will indicate that an account is on autopay, but it is not really on autopay and this is why my auto payments are not taking place. She also stated that after forbearance, autopay can not be set up online and that it must be done manually via a form that she will mail out to me. Nobody ever informed us of this fact before or after the forbearance ended! I have spoken to a number of people about this autopay problem, including XXXX XXXX in XXXX and XXXX XXXX in XXXX and neither of them was aware of this caveat of the autopay system after forbearance despite the fact that they are employees of XXXX. If the employees themselves do not know, then how arecustomers/consumers expected to know???? No rational person should be expected to look at their online account that tells them they are on autopay and somehow know or expect that the autopay system will not function as it says it will. We have the right as consumers to expect a legitimate financial system to function as it specifies or we should be explicitly told how to avert a problem within the limitations of said system before it creates greater adversity for us, as it has for me now with my credit score. 

I filed complaints with each of the XXXX credit bureaus. However, the delinquency remains on my credit report due to XXXX XXXX XXXX to acknowledge that their system was the cause of thedelinquencyin questiondespite the ongoing failures I experience with their technical system. I am angry, frustrated, and offended that XXXX will not remove the XXXX delinquency from my credit report. This is infuriating, unethical, unfair, and just plain wrong. If a lender offers an autopay service, we have the right as consumers to expect it to function as specified and we have the right to be reliant on the system operating properly and should not be penalized for consequences resulting from that failure, as I have with my credit score. XXXX/XXXX  communication and ignorance on the part of some of their employees of their own system or lack of proper training were also serious contributing factors to this failure.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation