Consumer complaint received 2022-04-22
Company: EQUIFAX, INC.
State: CA
Product: Credit reporting, credit repair services, or other personal consumer reports
Sub-product: Credit reporting
Issue: Incorrect information on your report
Sub-issue: Account information incorrect

Complaint:
Disputing incorrect information on my credit report destroyed my credit. 

I have four charged-off accounts that are reporting incorrect information and have been for years, and on the recommendation of my FHA lender XXXX I disputed the accounts with all three credit bureaus. I thought that the worst thing that could happen was that they wouldn't remove the incorrect reports, but, apparently, it can be a lot worse. 

These accounts were originally charged off in XXXX. After my disputes were investigated, the credit bureaus decided that the information was correct ( which I still don't understand, because it's definitely not ). Because the disputes were closed in XXXX of this year, the date of my charge-offs is now showing as XX/XX/XXXX instead of the correct information of XX/XX/XXXX. 

Because of this, my credit scores plummeted. While my XXXX score evened out relatively quickly, my XXXX score dropped XXXX points and my Equifax score dropped XXXX points and neither have recovered since the disputes. 

That, in and of itself, would be bad enough, but now I'm getting denied for credit due to the fact that my credit report shows a recent charge-off. The credit bureaus have said that this is standard procedure, that, yes, they update the date of the charge-off because of the dispute, but if you look at the details, you can see the original charge-off date. Great, but automated credit application systems don't read the fine print. All they care about is the fact that my charge-off date now shows as XX/XX/XXXX. 

I'm now terrified of ever disputing another account, even if I know that I'm in the right. I can't sustain another massive loss in my credit score. Before this happened, I qualified for a lot of different kinds of credit, and now I can't get anything. 

As a XXXX person on a fixed income ( XXXX ) living well below the poverty line with no real hope of that changing, this has been devastating for my finances. The charge-offs are for private student loans that only went into delinquency in the first place due to my total XXXX and the refusal of the loan broker to communicate with me at all ( the lender listed has never had any record of my loans, and attempting to work with collections also led nowhere due to the actual lenders, whose identity I was never given, refusing to communicate with the agency and with each other ). Those incorrect reports were already severely harming my credit, and when I tried to get them fixed, all that I was given was an even heavier blow to my credit. 

The credit bureaus say that this is standard procedure. It really, really shouldn't be. If nothing else, I would've appreciated a warning that this could even happen. I had no idea. I thought that I had a chance to rectify the damage caused by a shady student lender. I thought that the credit bureaus would at least try to help. I thought that, if they couldn't help, I'd at least be no worse off than when I started. I thought wrong.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation