Consumer complaint received 2021-06-17
Company: Experian Information Solutions Inc.
State: MA
Product: Credit reporting, credit repair services, or other personal consumer reports
Sub-product: Credit reporting
Issue: Unable to get your credit report or credit score
Sub-issue: Other problem getting your report or credit score

Complaint:
I am trying to apply for a new apartment. The apartment 's credit check attempted to access my credit report from Experian. The apartment reached out to me and informed me that I did not have any credit history, and asked if I had frozen my credit. 

I attempted to ascertain whether that was true. It took me a full week to even get ahold of anyone at Experian, who ( despite NUMEROUS web errors telling me I needed to contact their helpline, which does *NOT* connect you to a real human. ever. I had to claim i was a business client. ) When I spoke with them, they told me there was no freeze on my account, and that the apartment should be able to run a credit check. I then called the leasing manager back. She was still *unable* to run a credit check. I then used " XXXX '' to try to pull a copy of my credit report. I did so with no issues with XXXX  and XXXX. I received an error stating I could not access my Experian report. I then called Experian back. 

I was then bounced around to 6+ people. Every single one of them told me I did not have a freeze on my account. Multiple call center staff suggested I had filled out my information incorrectly. I double checked with the apartment previously. All of the information was correct. Similarly, since I was able to access both my XXXX  and XXXX  through XXXX by entering information once, in only one form, I clearly had not mistyped anything. 


I then spent 90+ minutes being bounced between call center staff, all of whom suggested that perhaps, rather than a freeze, my account had been locked. They would each then check that, inform me that my account was not locked, and suggest I had done something wrong. Some of them suggested there might be a fraud alert placed on the account. They then checked, and did not find any fraud alerts. Almost every one of these people then told me it must be a problem elsewhere. Again, I find it VERY difficult to believe that multiple other companies are all unable to access reports with Experian, rather than Experian being the problem. 

I was repeatedly told that they were escalating my complaint. I finally spoke to someone in the " Tier 1 '' complaint division. I went through the entire above conversation, AGAIN. I then told them that it was not my preference to pursue action against them through the Attorney General 's Consumer Protection Division, or any other government entity or elected official 's office. But given that there is an issue on their end that they can't or won't address, and it's liable to cost me multiple thousands of dollars, I don't feel that I have the time to wait for weeks for them to ostensibly resolve it. I was then told that a manager would call me back. 

Unsurprisingly, one has not. I will likely need to pay the multiple thousands of dollars in a security deposit, and this will also still need to be resolved if I ever need to have a substantive credit, background, or security clearance check done. I have zero faith in Experian actually addressing this without assistance from a government entity or particularly diligent legislative staffer. 



To summarize : - it is IMPOSSIBLE to speak to a human at Experian - They are either unwilling or unable to fix what must be an issue on their end. If multiple different entities are unable to access my credit report through Experian, all logic points to Experian as the issue, NOT multiple other companies.

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 explanation