Consumer complaint received 2023-03-14
Company: EQUIFAX, INC.
State: VA
Product: Credit reporting, credit repair services, or other personal consumer reports
Sub-product: Credit reporting
Issue: Incorrect information on your report
Sub-issue: Account status incorrect

Complaint:
( This is a new complaint about XXXX 's management of the lease. ) - PROBLEM : XXXX 's repeated failures to acknowledge my property tax exemption led to XXXX 's a ) incorrectly reporting a delinquency to the credit bureaus, and b ) making it nearly impossible for the customer to understand the true status of the account on any given day. 

- SOLUTION : XXXX corrects its reporting to each credit bureau to reflect : a ) I was never late during this lease, and b ) I no longer owe XXXX anything. 

- DESCRIPTION : The 39-month lease was from XXXX until XXXX. I was the sole lessee. Because of my XXXX XXXX military status, I was exempt from property taxes on this vehicle. Pretty much over the entire life of the lease, XXXX sent me notices that I had to re-pay XXXX for the property taxes XXXX paid on my behalf. Over the entire life of the lease, I repeatedly asked XXXX for a copy of the XXXX XXXX, Virginia, property tax bill. XXXX repeatedly failed to provide a copy of the actual XXXX XXXX property tax bill. Despite my explicit requests " for the front and back of the ACTUAL property tax bill, '' XXXX would send me a computer screen printout from its accounting system. ( Having a copy of the actual bill would allow me to have complete information when making my case to XXXX that I was exempt. ) I attempted to get the tax bill directly from XXXX XXXX. But I had no luck. XXXX XXXX told me that, because XXXX owned the vehicle, XXXX would have to give me the bill. 

While I repeatedly went back and forth with XXXX, attempting to communicate with XXXX via e-mails, phone calls, and certified letters, XXXX stopped applying my lease payments to the actual lease. Instead, XXXX began using my lease payments to re-pay itself for property taxes. This led XXXX to repeatedly report to the credit bureaus that I was late on my monthly lease payments. This effectively occurred each year during the lease. This created constant confusion in both XXXX 's management of the lease, and the customer 's ability to understand the true status of the account on any given day -- i.e., how much money I legitimately owed XXXX, and for what I legitimately owed XXXX money. 

[ For example, on numerous occasions during the lease, XXXX told me I was late to re-pay them for some kind of traffic ticket. But on these occasions, given the fact that I had not received timely notice of XXXX 's paying a traffic citation on my behalf, and given the constant confusion created by XXXX 's handling of the property tax situation, I was not confident in XXXX 's suddenly telling me, " You are late to re-pay us for a traffic citation we never told you about in the first place. Now pay us back. '' This is an example of how XXXX 's handling of the property tax situation made it difficult to understand the true status of the account on any given day -- i.e., how much money I legitimately owed XXXX, and for what I legitimately owed XXXX money. ] - Eventually, in spring XXXX, just before the end of the lease, XXXX finally acknowledged my property tax exemption. After receiving XXXX 's acknowledgment, and after multiple inquiries on my part, XXXX eventually reimbursed me. In other words, over the life of the lease, XXXX had taken my regular monthly lease payments and, instead of giving me credit for the payment, had applied my payments to the taxes XXXX erroneously said I had to re-pay them. In XXXX eyes, that made my regular lease payments delinquent. XXXX then reported that delinquency to the credit bureaus. Then, at the end of the lease, when XXXX acknowledged my tax exemption, XXXX refunded that money to me. In other words, at the end of the lease, XXXX refunded to me the very money XXXX had spent the past 39 months telling the credit bureaus I was delinquent in giving them. Effectively, XXXX said to me, You know that money we said you were not paying us on time, and then told the credit bureaus you were not paying us on time? Well, here you go. We are giving you that money back. But we are not going to correct our reporting to the credit bureaus. Sorry about that. 

- PROBLEM : XXXX 's repeated failures to acknowledge my property tax exemption led to XXXX 's a ) incorrectly reporting a delinquency to the credit bureaus, and b ) making it nearly impossible for the customer to understand the true status of the account on any given day. 

- SOLUTION : XXXX corrects its reporting to each credit bureau to reflect : a ) I was never late during this lease, and b ) I no longer owe XXXX anything.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation