Consumer complaint received 2020-10-12
Company: Experian Information Solutions Inc.
State: AZ
Product: Credit reporting, credit repair services, or other personal consumer reports
Sub-product: Credit reporting
Issue: Problem with fraud alerts or security freezes

Complaint:
I have tried to make contact with Experian to remove a freeze on my credit reporting because my refinance company for my home has said my account is frozen. I NEVER asked ANY of the credit reporting companies to freeze my credit lines. The other two companies provided the credit scores to the refinance company. I think this has to do with Experian being hacked awhile back and when they wouldn't give me a monetary settlement, they said I had to take 'free credit monitoring ' instead. I told them I didn't want it, but they appear to have frozen my account anyway. I have spent countless hours in the past few days trying to get Experian to UNFREEZE my account BUT I can not even get them to talk with me. I've used the following phone numbers XXXX, XXXX, and XXXX and it was indicated I needed to use opt XXXX, of which there IS no option at this number. Every time I try to call these numbers after the 3rd question, I am disconnected from the call. I did finally get a LIVE person at the Tech support number and he told me I had to call the XXXX number which I did and after going through several 'phone trees ' I finally got a live person who asked for my name and social security number and then told me I didn't exist in the system. I told him I must because my refinance company said my account with Experian was frozen. He told me, 'no problem ' I'll build you an account and handle it that way. I told him I had spent numerous hours over the past days making phone calls to them and in each case I was disconnected. I asked if I could give him my cell number in case we got disconnected and he told me he was sorry but I couldn't do that. A couple of minutes later I was disconnected. I have also tried to 'unfreeze ' my account ON LINE, after I enter my 'street number ' I am always given a message that I have to call an 800 number they give me but in each case I am disconnected once I get into the call and answer their questions to verify who I am. This company is causing me great grief and it appears it will be jeopardizing my ability to refinance my home. They make it extremely difficult to get help FROM them on an issue. First of all I need resolve. Second, I want to know what government agency I can file a formal complaint and whether or not I can sue them for damages. They are incompetent. It was THEY who allowed my information to be hacked and accessed through THEIR organizational incompetence and then the only compensation for this was to evidentially force me to use their credit monitoring by freezing my account. If we are FORCED to have an incompetent organization like Experian be one of the 3 credit agencies then I think it is time to let our congressional representatives know of the atrocities they are putting hard working Americans through. As a last attempt to solve this problem I went into Experian 's web site and build a new account ( # XXXX ) as I think that was what the one agent who I briefly got to talk to was doing. I had hoped to be able to then use this account to unfreeze ANY account with my name/social security number/ and birthdate. The end result was simply a new account that said I had a 8 for a credit score since I had no credit history. I am truly at wits-end.

Company public response: Company has responded to the consumer and the CFPB and chooses not to provide a public response
Company response to consumer: Closed with non-monetary relief