Consumer complaint received 2020-03-07
Company: EQUIFAX, INC.
State: MA
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:
I'm a current customer who has been in forbearance for some time now. Though I stand to soon start paying off a substantial student loan amount, I haven't been in a position to pay off my loan quite yet. I have signed up for an IBR and do intend on being considered for the Public Servant loan forgiveness program -still waiting to hear back about it- but I, at the moment, am not in a position to begin repayment. As the IBR has already been calculated, I've already been able to calculate what my payments will look like when I am ready to start making payments ( hopefully as soon as later next month ). 

Yet, I have to live my life and strive for the things I need, namely, buying a house. And as is customary for buying a house, I am doing my best to fix my credit, which has not been ideal. Despite the amount of debts I've been working on paying off, I've been doing a really good job and making a super concerted effort increasing my score over time. But there is an enormous obstacle in my way, and that is your incorrect reporting. As far as I can gather, from my heavy research, conversations with XXXX XXXX, XXXX, Equifax personnel, and from your personnel and website, my increases in interest while in forbearance should not be affecting my credit score. 

Yet in XX/XX/XXXX, my credit score increased by 64 points and yesterday, XX/XX/XXXX, it increased by 47 points. Prior to XX/XX/XXXX, I had close to 600 in my credit score, but then an increase in my XXXX loans ( though I was in forbearance ) for about XXXX dollars or so, brought me down to XXXX. 

After I was discouraged from applying to a home because of this, I submitted a letter to XXXX and my credit bureaus about this mistake, which I thought had been rectified, and then went to work at improving my score. Recently, my score was a XXXX, just 4 shy from the minimum most conventional lenders would consider. I was just about to apply for pre-approval when I wake up this morning to this terrible news. Now I'm at XXXX! I can't apply for the house again and all because you are reporting to the credit bureaus about my interest increase. I have not received any notification that credit reporting standards have changed and it is directly affecting my family, despite my writing a latter to XXXX and not being in default at all. Never have been. 

All you know is that no matter what you do, something random and completely out of control just plunges your credit score when you're not expecting it and rather unjustly. And then it's the weekend, so you can't get this resolved until Monday, and even then, you'll have to wait a while until the issue is fixed ( if it can be fixed ) and just hope that when the next cycle goes through, it doesn't happen again. It is so discouraging and XXXX does nothing to fix this. 

I'm attaching snapshots of this error and am sharing this with all of the relevant organizations. I'll also be writing a news article about this. Please fix this as soon as possible.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation