Consumer complaint received 2015-08-04
Company: EQUIFAX, INC.
State: FL
Product: Credit reporting
Issue: Incorrect information on credit report
Sub-issue: Information is not mine

Complaint:
In order to obtain my free credit report that I am entitled to by law once every year, I went to Equifax 's website. The XXXX questions XXXX out of XXXX ) that Equifax asked to verify my information to show my free credit report to me included information that had XXXX to do with me such as what company I have an auto loan with and how much the payment on that auto loan is. I answered these XXXX questions by choosing " none of the above '' as I have no auto loans thus no payment due on an auto loan but Equifax deemed my answers inaccurate and, as a result, did not show my credit report to me online. So at that point, I knew there had to be inaccuracies on my report. 

In order to have access to my Equifax credit report online, on XXXX XXXX, 2015, I signed up for Equifax 's " 3-Bureau Credit Scores with FREE 7-day trial '' promotion, which Equifax describes on its website ( equifax.com/freetrial/ ) as " free for the first week, then {$17.00} per month. '' I signed up for this service with the intention of cancelling it before the 7 day trial expired as the sole reason of my signing up was to see my credit report online that I was not allowed to see online for FREE. 

Interestingly, the same verification questions popped up and I answered them in the exact manner that I did when Equifax did not allow me to see my FREE credit report but once I entered my card information, Equifax did not care if my answers were correct and let me have access to my credit report anyway. 

Just as I suspected, there were a bunch of inaccuracies on my report as Equifax has merged my credit report with that of my sister, and the merge includes our names, ( even social security numbers as if one person can have more than one social security number! ), addresses, installments, revolving accounts, inquiries, negative information, basically EVERYTHING. I started disputing all the inaccuracies ( and there were A LOT of them ) on the report, and the process took up my entire XXXX and XXXX. 

When I called Equifax over the phone on XXXX ( XXXX XXXX ), a rep told me the dispute department is closed on XXXX and that I need to call back tomorrow ( Monday ) between XXXX and XXXX. He also told me that even if I cancel my service now, I would still have access to my information until the free trial ends, meaning my free trial was to end up on XXXX XXXX so I cancelled the service on the phone with him. 

I called Equifax on XXXX and the dispute department was completely useless. I spent over an hour on the phone only to be transferred around by the dispute department. They could n't even locate my file so frustrated, I eventually hung up. Today, I logged in to my Equifax account to check the status of my disputes but Equifax wo n't let me see my disputes anymore even though my free trial period is NOT even over yet. Equifax sent me an e-mail that reads, " We regret to inform you Equifax Complete Premier Plan is no longer able to monitor your XXXX credit files. We would like to offer you Equifax Credit Watch Gold for {$99.00} as an alternative. To enroll in Equifax Credit Watch Gold, click the link below. " I am under the impression that Equifax knows how committed I am to undoing the mess that THEY created by merging my file with that of my sister and are exploiting the situation by encouraging me to sign up for costly services that I am not interested in. All I am interested in is for them to fix their own errors. In addition, Equifax has charged {$1.00} to the credit cardS that I entered to sign up for Equifax 's " 3-Bureau Credit Scores with FREE 7-day trial '' promotion, which Equifax describes on its website ( equifax.com/freetrial/ ) as " free for the first week, then {$17.00} per month '' and I say " credit cardS '' because the first card did not go through when I tried to sign up so I used another card. Apparently, it went through on their end, which is why Equifax charged both cards {$1.00}.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation