Consumer complaint received 2022-03-28
Company: EQUIFAX, INC.
State: MD
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: Difficulty submitting a dispute or getting information about a dispute over the phone

Complaint:
I currently have XXXX federal students loans that are so large, I needed to enter into an income-driven repayment program. I started that immediately upon graduation in XXXX. 

I have XXXX major difficulties. The most pressing is the second, but I will provide details on the first here because it impacts the second. 
1 ) My first difficulty is that my student loan servicer, XXXX, did not adequately disclose certain things about this program : A. They indicated that, provided payments are made and the account is kept in good standing, any remaining loan balance would be forgiven after 20 years in this program. They only just recently informed me that certain accounts ( which coincidentally make up the majority of my loan balance ) will not go into forgiveness status until 25 years of payments. So after making payments for 6 years and believing I had 14 years remaining, I was informed that I still really have 19. 

B. They did not indicate to me the extent to which I would be accruing interest that would be capitalized onto my loans. I have already accrued an additional {$30000.00} in interest that has been added to my principal. That accrual has occurred even with zero interest for the last 2 years due to COVID forbearance -- meaning that interest accrued all within the first 4 years of repayment. At this point, it will only accrue faster because I now have an even higher principal amount my rate will be applied to. ( This accrual of crippling amounts of extra debt is in spite of the fact that I was paying back close to {$10000.00} a year in student loan payments ). 

It is this additional {$30000.00} in capitalized interest that has caused my second issue : 2 ) Starting in XX/XX/XXXX, Equifax started reporting my student loan accounts differently. They now indicate that, because this interest has been capitalized and my principal balance is now higher than that of the original loan disbursement, my accounts are effectively over their credit limit. This is not true and XXXX has indicated to me that the account is in good standing, the current principal amount is not higher than an allowable balance and the loan origination amount is NOT accurately indicative of a " credit limit '' or " high credit '' as equifax is currently using it. Despite indicating this to me, they refuse to send any documentation to me stating as such and Equifax refuses to make any changes to my credit report without explicit written instructions from the creditor ( they also refuse to speak to the creditor on the phone in a conference call ). 

The result of this new and incorrect representation of my federal student loan accounts on my credit report is that, between last fall and now, my credit score dropped from XXXX to XXXX. A XXXX point drop in my credit score is debilitating. I had sold my car during COVID because I was working from home and got an excellent offer for it. But my job is returning to office and if I can not purchase another car because I can not get a car loan, I could lose my job. And I have already been denied a car loan application from both my current credit card bank and other major lenders. 

The attachments indicate the way this content is being mis-represented on my credit report.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation