Consumer complaint received 2019-03-12
Company: EQUIFAX, INC.
State: LA
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: Difficulty submitting a dispute or getting information about a dispute over the phone

Complaint:
This filing is in conjunction with a conversation I already had with one of your representatives. 

I've been working on my credit really hard for 3 years. My credit took a pretty hard hit at the passing of my mother back in XXXX. I had some late payments and even lost one of my credit cards. To which they sent it to collections. I have been diligently paying off ALL of my bad debt, having negative things removed from my report, paying on time every month for 3 years. I've watched my score go up steadily on all 3 of the major reporting agencies ; Equifax, XXXX, and XXXX. There are no NEW bad debt accounts on my credit report since that time. And in fact the only negative marks are the now closed and paid for credit account with XXXX XXXX and the late payments from 3 years ago. On XX/XX/XXXX I checked my scores and they were ; XXXX XXXX, XXXX  XXXX, and Equifax XXXX. I'd hit my goal! 

On XX/XX/XXXX, I went back to look at my score because ( well, it's pretty and I worked so hard for it ) my husband and I are finally ready to buy our first house and we will be starting the prequalification in the next couple of months. But when I checked it, Equifax had dropped my score by a whopping XXXX pts virtually overnight! I checked through everything to see if some new collections came up that I was unaware of. But to my astonishment there was absolutely no changes to my report. It was completely clean! 

I immediately went to the equifax website and wrote customer service about the issue asking for explanation and they sent back a form reply directing me to FAQ on why my score may have gone down. I called them on XX/XX/XXXX twice. The first time I called, the man kept giving me the scripted reply saying that the reason it COULD have gone down was because of the 3 year old late payments and the 3 year old closed and paid for account. I told him what I told you above and his reply to everything was that I needed to buy a copy of my credit report and score from them in order to find out why specifically my score went down. And then he hung up on me. I called right back and spoke to a woman who basically said the exact same thing to me almost verbatim. I did however, purchase my report from them so I am being cooperative. She also told me that I could file a complaint over the phone but when I tried to do that she said that I needed a specific entity to file against so they could represent my interest. The problem with that is there is nothing on my credit file to complain against. Only the fact that they dropped my score by XXXX points for no reason at all. I asked her who I could talk to about this to get this obvious mistake fixed. And her answer to me was that they don't have a department for credit score errors in and of its self. It must be a complaint against some agency who has reported bad credit against me. ( but again, there is no such entity. I hope I'm making sense ) In summation Equifax dropped my credit score by XXXX pts by their own volition and have no inter departmental oversight in order to assist me in fixing this egregious error. You are my only hope. PLEASE help me. If there's any way I can assist you, please let me know. I will be anxiously awaiting your reply so I can continue on to owning my own home for the first time in my life.

Company response to consumer: Closed with non-monetary relief