Consumer complaint received 2022-07-19
Company: EQUIFAX, INC.
State: VA
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:
This is in regard to XX/XX/XXXX Equifax Data Breach Class Action. But before I go any further, I would like to point out the following two key dates : Equifax breach date XX/XX/XXXX Initial claim deadline - XX/XX/XXXX Between these two dates alone, more than two years have passed. And from the date of the breach to this date, it has been nearly FIVE YEARS. It is also worth mentioning that a large portion of the victims won't witness the fallout from Equifax 's blunder for years, especially considering the proliferation of synthetic ID theft and the overall difficulty of detecting any form of ID thefts. 

I'm one of the victims who were impacted by the data breach and I filed my initial claim on XX/XX/XXXX. And after more than two years of silence, I received an email from the data breach team XXXX informing me that the supporting documents I submitted were insufficient. I had provided any and all documents that I still had access to back in XXXX. I itemized the expenses and costs incurred thanks to Equifax 's catastrophic mistake. 

As expected with just any other enforcement actions and subsequent class action lawsuits, Equifax didn't have to admit any wrongdoing. But it appealed the district court 's decision further delaying the compensation to the affected victims. In my personal opinion, Equifax was devious in its legal maneuvers and tactics to achieve a goal - to run out the clock and prevent victims from gathering supporting documents for claims. After all, time passes, and memory fades. 

While Equifax and its team employed their devious plans to delay the settlement process and took their time reviewing the documents for over two and a half years, it didn't even extend the same courtesy of giving me a reasonable amount of time to dig through a mountain of stale documents that are now nearly five years old! The email set a hard deadline of XX/XX/XXXX, and gave me less than a month to produce new sets of documents or face the inevitable denial of claims. How is this acceptable? 

I should also mention the fact that the Consumer Protection Regulations, such as Regulation DD and Regulation E, only requires financial institutions to maintain customer financial record for approximately 2 years ( Reg E, 25 months, but still ). As such, I say Equifax cleverly planned this delay to wait out the period so it could compel the affected victims from obtaining necessary documents from the sources ( i.e. banks, credit card companies, ID protection service providers ), which most likely have discarded those financial records at this point. 

Five years is a long time, and some of the companies that I paid in connection with the data breach either got merged or went defunct. Please remember, that I filed my claim ( XXXX ) back in XX/XX/XXXX along with supporting evidence to justify any and all expenses incurred and those expenses that were covered in the lawsuit. If there were some irregularities with my submission, then Equifax SHOULD'VE MENTIONED IT WITHIN A REASONABLE TIME INSTEAD OF RUNNING OUT THE CLOCK! 

Most of the expenses and time incurred for the damage control occurred between XX/XX/XXXX and XX/XX/XXXX. I provided a detailed explanation of how my time was spent/wasted, how much money I lost by providing bank statements from a bank that later went out of business ( a mobile bank called " XXXX '' ), and emails dating back years. I just find it unreasonable to have the victim produce evidence that may no longer exist and at no fault of the victim 's action. And I don't think I'm the only person in this predicament, but at least I know a little bit about the lawsuit and federal regulations, thanks to my prior years XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX. I can't say the same for the other victims, but it is not hard to imagine just how helpless and frustrated they may feel at this point.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation