Consumer complaint received 2020-02-20
Company: EQUIFAX, INC.
State: IL
Product: Credit reporting, credit repair services, or other personal consumer reports
Sub-product: Credit reporting
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:
I've had an strange account on my credit report back some 7 or 8 years from today .... I've contacted Equifax multiple times back then about this account name XXXX and I asked them to remove it. Equifax claimed that they investigated the account, which they gave me no proof of and only said that the company in dispute XXXX XXXX XXXX have verified the account as being verified!!. I then called and told Equifax that I was not disputing this as an valid/verifiable account, but not my account. I told the agent that it may well be an account that they have on file from a person whom stolen my information and it would be considered " verified '' as the correct personal information since a person that stolen my information would have, and anybody could have that information on hand ... But I asked for proof/evidence of some kind with my, or anybody signature, address, phone number or even a contract for the account. And of course not one piece of document was presented. Equifax did another so called investigation, given this company more time to come up with something, or just hoping I would not dispute again to keep this on my report so they can profit off a " blemished '' report to sell to future creditors I guess, and they finished yet another investigation over 30 days just to say the same thing .... Why did it take so long to do another investigation with still no documentation of this account? I don't think there is no account valid, and I still have no proof of who, or what this account is. And Equifax response was " since the company SAID it was yours, then that's it, no proof is needed '' And he went on to say we can't make them provide evidence, we just take their word. How is this legal to take a word of somebody accounting mistakes? How is this legal to not proof the facts? How is this legal to make a claim without proof of document? And Equifax also stated " a creditor don't have to proof it is your account, just tell us it's an account ''. That makes no sense if they can't proof it, it is just your ( the consumers ) problem. I asked multiple times for this creditor to provide me proof of something documented that this is my loan, and nobody is able to find documents and this has been going on well over 30 days. And they even made matters worse by saying since I asked for an investigation, we just going to add more years onto this just because you wanted an investigation. To date, I still have fraud alert on my report dating back from over 20 years ago since I have been a person of identity theft and to find it hard how XXXX was able to pull and give credit to someone else without ; A ) Doing a phone verification ( which they have no documented proof of my contact number ) And this creditor ; 1 ) Can't provide proof of signature for such a loan, 2 ) Don't have documented proof of my address, 3 ) Don't have proof of my contact number and 4 ) Can not provide any related documents about this account. Now lets  take a moment to review the opening date of this account, which states XX/XX/2011. That would not be possible anyway since I was hospitalized before, during and months after that date which makes it even harder for this to be my account. This account here is not mines and appears to be fraudulent and way too old anyway for this nonsense to continue for no reason, I would like this account removed promptly at this time. I also think you should have Equifax investigated for not even doing an investigation ... I strongly believe this, and the other credit bureau 's is not doing investigations and just telling consumers they are!! I don't think the credit bureau 's are doing any thing that involves looking into accounts consumers dispute.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation