Consumer complaint received 2019-06-10
Company: EQUIFAX, INC.
State: MA
Product: Credit reporting, credit repair services, or other personal consumer reports
Sub-product: Credit reporting
Issue: Problem with fraud alerts or security freezes

Complaint:
On Saturday, XX/XX/XXXX, I went to a bank to open a new account. I was told that I needed to lift a security freeze on my credit reports to open this account. I asked what credit reporting agency they used, and they told me Equifax. 
So I went home to look up the PIN I was sent when I created the freeze on the Equifax account and tried to lift the freeze. Their website indicates that one has to make a myEquifax account to lift and place security freezes. Their privacy disclosure stated that there was a phone number I could call if I didn't want to create a myEquifax account. I tried calling that number, but it did not have any options about lifting/placing security freezes. So I decided that I had to create the myEquifax account to temporarily lift the freeze so I could open my bank account. 
I made the account and logged in, but the website told me that I could not log in and to call customer service at XXXX. I called and was able to have the freeze lifted so that I could open my bank account. When I asked about the website, he told me that it was down and to try again in 24 hours. 
I called again on Sunday, XXXX XXXX, 1926 hours later, and I still experienced issues with not being able to access my account. The representative assured me that it would work in " one hour 's time. '' I waited 90 minutes and tried again to access my account on myEquifax.com. It still did not work. I called customer service again and asked them to look into the problem as I wanted to know the status of the security freeze ( whether it had been reinstated after the temporary lifting ) and see for myself that it was done. The first agent I spoke with on Sunday expressed amazement that anyone had told me it would take only 24 hours or 1 hour to fix the issue. He transferred me to his supervisor, who then transferred me to " myEquifax technical support '' for more help with the issue. 
I was told by the myEquifax technical support person that the website had been down for days, that they were " adding features to the website, '' and that the website was down while they were " updating the website. '' I asked why they didn't do upgrades on a non-live website so that they didn't mess up access for people, and she couldn't explain. She told me to write a letter and send it to the credit dispute department ( even though this has nothing to do with a dispute about anything on my credit report ). 
I called again on Monday, XX/XX/XXXX, after I decided that I didn't want Equifax to have access to my email address as well as wanting to recuse myself from the terms of their privacy policy, specifically the term that allows them to place robocalls to me. I talked to a succession of representatives who were unhelpful, telling me that they had no access to delete my information or telling me that I should just " call back in 48 hours '' or " call back in 7-10 days '' to see if the issue was resolved. Finally, I got to talk to a manager who seemed to be competent. He changed the email associated with my account to a fake email ( something that I would not be able to receive ). I got a notice of the email change to my email account. I told him that that was not acceptable as Equifax would then send information to the fake email address and I would be bound to the terms of that email without knowing about it ( as I could not access it ). I told him that he needed to delete the entire account to ensure that I would not be bound by terms and conditions that I had no way of receiving. He said that he could not do that and hung up on me (! ). 
I called back and again talked to a succession of customer service representatives, the last of which told me that I no longer had a myEquifax account associated with my name. However, I can not get any verification of this except by trusting the agent on the other side of the phone line. 
I was told that they are unable to send confirmation of changes via the U.S.  Postal Service and that they could not show me the information that they have on me in my account.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation