Consumer complaint received 2020-11-21
Company: EQUIFAX, INC.
State: MI
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:
See XXXX for history. I recently disputed payment history for my XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX. The information was presented along with documentation by the CRAs to XXXX XXXX for investigation. Although documents were provided to the CRAs and presumably passed along to XXXX XXXX, no individual at XXXX XXXX performed an investigation. Rather, the information was returned using the eOSCAR system, meaning a computer simply returned the values that it had and reported it to the CRAs through eOSCAR. Equifax confirms this as their response to teh XXXX XX/XX/XXXX complaint with ID XXXX, " Thank you for submitting your complaint through the CFPB Complaint Portal. In your complaint, you indicated that there were inaccurate or incorrect items reporting on your credit file. Please be advised that an investigation with the furnisher of the information was completed and results were mailed to you. We hope this resolves your concerns. If you have any additional questions, you may call ( XXXX ) XXXX or you may visit www.myequifax.com. With myEquifax, you can create an account to manage your security freeze, add or remove fraud alerts, and initiate credit file disputes. Additionally you can access free Equifax credit reports and other products. '' That response to the CFPB is dated XXXX XX/XX/XXXX -- three ( 3 ) days after the complaint was filed iwth the CFPB. 

At this point, Equifax, and the other CRAs, are clearly not conducting an investigation, but blindly relying upon the accuracy of the information provided by the furnisher, with no checks to ensure the factual accuracy of dates reporting. 

Now, per XXXX XXXX 's policy, the first statement generation date is within a period of thirty ( 30 ) to sixty ( 60 ) days after the end of an in-school forbearance period. In the XXXX response to XXXX, Ms. XXXX XXXX states " records show that your forbearance was approved and processed on XX/XX/XXXX good through XX/XX/XXXX, but since XX/XX/XXXX fell on a Friday the loan went into repayment the following business day which was XX/XX/XXXX. '' This highlights that a statement generated around XXXX XX/XX/XXXX would not have a payment amount due until at least twenty ( 20 ) days beyond the XXXX XX/XX/XXXX generation date. Per the statement generated on XXXX XX/XX/XXXX, the first payment for my student loans was allegedly due XXXX XX/XX/XXXX. I do not another statement generated until XXXX XX/XX/XXXX with an alleged due-date of XXXX XX/XX/XXXX. Nevertheless, under XXXX XXXX 's assertion, that would mean that a payment was not more than thirty ( 30 ) days late as of XXXX XX/XX/XXXX. A payment was not more than sixty ( 60 ) days late as of XXXX XX/XX/XXXX. A payment was not more than ninety ( 90 ) days late as of XXXX XX/XX/XXXX. A payment was not more than one-hundred twenty ( 120 ) days late as of XXXX XX/XX/XXXX. The date of this complaint is XXXX XX/XX/XXXX. XXXX XXXX has reported one of my student loan accounts as four ( 4 ) payments past-due because of a misapplied payment. The point is XXXX XXXX is now preemptively reporting payments past-due because it is a logical impossibility for a payment to be past-due by one-hundred twenty days ( 120 ) before the due date allegedly established as the XXXX ( XXXX ) day of each month beginning XXXX XX/XX/XXXX. 

This is not new behavior for XXXX XXXX as the CFPB brought XXXX XXXX 's illegal student loan servicing practices to light and announced enforcement action against XXXX XXXX on XXXX XX/XX/XXXX. The CFPB found that XXXX XXXX was engaging in action that constituted the following law violations : ( 1 ) unfair and deceptive practices related to payment allocation in violation of Sections 1031 and 1036 of the Consumer Financial Protection Act of 2010 ( CFPA ), 12 U.S.C. 5531, 5536 ; ( 2 ) unfair practices related to payment aggregation in violation of Sections 1031 and 1036 of the CFPA, 12 U.S.C. 5531, 5536 ; ( 3 ) unlawful practices related to payment aggregation in violation of Section 623 of the Fair Credit Reporting Act ( FCRA ), 15 U.S.C. 1681s-2 ( a ) ( 2 ), and Section 1022.42 of Regulation V, 12 C.F.R. 1022.42 ( a ) ; and ( 4 ) unfair practices related to the assessment of late fees in violation of Sections 1031 and 1036 of the CFPA, 12 U.S.C. 5531, 5536. Now, under the Dodd-Frank Act, the CFPB has the authority to take action against institutions engaging in unfair or deceptive practices. One of the terms of the consent order filed against in XX/XX/XXXX mandated that XXXX must " must remove any negative student loan information that has been inaccurately or incompletely provided to a consumer reporting company. '' In the XXXX XX/XX/XXXX CFPB press release, CFPB Director XXXX XXXX as states, XXXX XXXX hit borrowers with illegal fees and deprived others of critical information needed to effectively manage their student loan accounts, Consumers should be able to rely on their servicer to process and credit payments correctly and to provide accurate and timely information and we will continue our work to improve the student loan servicing market. In my case XXXX XXXX has charged illegal late fees on my account due to their billing practices stated above, supplied inaccurate and/or incomplete information to the CRAs, and failed to provide timely, accurate information in their billing statements. All of these are in violation of the consent agreement XXXX XXXX entered into with the CFPB in late XXXX of XXXX. With a ten ( XXXX ) billion dollar student loan portfolio, XXXX XXXX 's practices continue to harm millions of individuals whose loans they service -- I appear to repeatedly be one of them within the past few months and XXXX continues to ignore the CFPB consent order. 

XXXX XXXX needs to be held accountable for gross incompetence and deceptive payment application practices.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation