Consumer complaint received 2023-07-17
Company: Affirm Holdings, Inc
State: PA
Product: Payday loan, title loan, or personal loan
Sub-product: Installment loan
Issue: Problem with a credit reporting company's investigation into an existing problem
Sub-issue: Their investigation did not fix an error on your report

Complaint:
In XXXX XXXX XXXX  and XXXX were just beginning. I was buying something online and saw there was a new type of pay-in-equal payments called Affirm. These were set to automatically deduct from my checking account so I tried it on a purchase for {$100.00} and another one for {$100.00} to compare it with XXXX and XXXX. 

Nothing in the advertising mentioned a line of credit or reporting to a credit bureau however, when checking out, I was prompted for my Social Security number. I hesitated and thought was strange, but all of these types of payment methods were new at the time so I figured it was to validate my ability to repay. At checkout the verbiage pointed out that they do not use your credit for this auto pay. 

I have a membership with XXXX so I got an alert from XXXX saying that I had two new credit lines. These were the two purchases from Affirm that were supposed to be paying automatically using the debit card linked to my checking account, but they reported them both to XXXX and my credit score dropped about XXXX points! I immediately paid off what was left if both, closed my whole Affirm account, and disputed them with XXXX. 

Over the last four years I have disputed those two reportings many times, probably at least once a year to no avail. Every time was rejected. I also called Affirm multiple times and spoke with supervisors and managers who were all rude and told me that they would not remove them. They even said that they are legally required to report it, which I do not think is true, especially for minuscule amounts that should never have been a line of credit and the fact I paid them right away, notified Affirm of the issue and permanently closed my Affirm account. 

This was a case of bait and switch. They advertised their payment product as if it was pike an automatic pay-in-equal payments broken out that dont touch your credit. The payments were set up with my debit card to automatically come out of my bank, so when they hit my XXXX credit, I immediately went in to the app and paid them in full. I did not use Affirm because I needed to, but I was merely using it to try it out and compare with XXXX and XXXX 

Most recently, I asked XXXX to process a dispute on their end, and that one also was rejected. That was probably a few months ago. 

So my back is against the wall. I was absolutely devastated when this happed because it dropped my credit score by about XXXX points. I made it clear to Affirm representatives, supervisors, and managers the details of what happened as well as how it dropped my credit score and that I did not agree for them to create lines of credit and report those to XXXX, but they refused to remove it. 

These lines of credit arent bad credit either, they are actually positive however, I have credit and would never in a million years taken out two lines of credit for a {$100.00} and {$100.00} item. That is absolutely absurd. 

I can provide any documents securely if needed or I can authorize your department to access those directly.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation