Consumer complaint received 2018-05-31
Company: EQUIFAX, INC.
State: TX
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 have consulted with credit experts on how to build my credit to earn the highest credit score to help me assure I get the best interest rates on loans, credit cards, mortgages and other credit products I plan to use in a business I'm working on launching.

One of the suggestions the experts made was to find friends, family members or a spouse to help me establish a relationships with larger banks using a strategy known as Authorized User and doing this will help me receive opt-in offers from the very creditors who report my activity resulting from being an Authorized user enabling me to be offered my own credit card with the XXXX XXXX   after 9 to12 months.

I started by asking my wife who was the first to help me in this endeavor and added me to a XXXX XXXX XXXX  Card she had which did start reporting on my credit file with all three bureaus in XX/XX/XXXX. However, around the time I got friends and family members to agree to help me accomplish the same, I noticed that when looking at my Equifax report the account which was reporting on my credit file from my wife was gone/missing from my credit file as in deleted or removed entirely but the other two bureaus XXXX XXXX and XXXX   were reporting my first XXXX tradeline just fine.

When I called Equifax Customer Service to inquire on this matter I explained the situation and what I was trying to accomplish and what happened and it was if I was speaking a different language no one could understand because all I kept hearing was that the account which I was reporting to them never existed on my credit file and they saw no evidence of it ever being on my file. I explained that I am a subscriber to Equifax Credit Monitoring services and that I check my credit report regularly since I've had problems with people applying for credit in my name without my knowledge or consent and that I needed to do things to help my credit improve so that I could start getting my life back to normal.

Then I shared that I have evidence that the XXXX   tradeline was in fact reporting and explained that my wife called XXXX XXXX to confirm that the issue I was experiencing was in fact not the banks doing. XXXX XXXX   did confirm they were actively reporting the account to my credit report and that there were no issues they were aware of as to why they would not be. I had no reason but to believe them given the account in question has been reporting to the other two credit bureaus just fine as they stated.

This was explained to XXXX   in a series of phone calls to various departments including Consumer Relations when I spoke to a XXXX on XX/XX/XXXX who said the exact same thing to me, other people, I spoke to said and that was there was no evidence of it ever being reported on my credit file. She suggested I send them a copy of the credit reports I had downloaded from their website service so she could look into why my wife 's authorized user account was no longer reporting to my credit file as it was before XX/XX/XXXX.

I explained to her what I'd been going through with people using my ID and doing things on my credit without my knowledge or consent and that a few months ago in my dispute of another matter which prevented me from pulling my own credit that the IT department along with the fraud department explained to me that the reason I was unable to access my own credit file was that there were multiple social security numbers associated with my credit file which caused it be become split into two or more files. Then it was explained to me that the IT department would need 72 hours to fix this and merge the files so that I could access it as I was paying for this expensive monitoring service every month and was unable to use the service I paid for.

The reason I shared this with XXXX was that I researched myFICO forums where other users had reported only Equifax doing this to their credit files and that it was related to misuse of their credit files due to fraud which caused the files to become split so that when an authorized user account was reported it didn't end up on the correct report but some other hidden report the consumer could not access. She said she didn't know anything about that and that I would need to speak with the fraud department regarding that.

I called yesterday to explain the exact same thing to about 6 different people getting no where in trying to explain this and asking them to pull the fax I sent in so they would see that this authorized user account was, in fact, reporting during the months of XX/XX/XXXX and XX/XX/XXXX and ceases to exist since XX/XX/XXXX and I included evidence to them from their own reports that this account did exist and was active in the reports of XX/XX/XXXX and XX/XX/XXXX yet I got no sense of impression any action would be taken. When I explained the same to them as I did to previous reps they said they didn't see any split file or other socials on my file which might be causing this trouble.

The issue to them appears to be confined and restricted to only XXXX  but a friend of mine added me to his credit card with XXXX XXXX which reports just fine to my XXXX and XXXX XXXX but again not Equifax and futher my wife added me to more of her accounts with other banks totalling 6 different authorized user accounts that do not report to Equifax at all, leading me back to the most probable theory in why they would appear to be blocking the reports on these types of tradelines which by the way are needed for me to prove to the banks I'll seek credit products from that I can manage the major credit cards I'm authorized to use over a 9 to 12 month period.

Equifax does not want to do anything to fix this issue and keeps shifting the blame wrongfully on the furnishers of the data whom all testify as actively reporting the accounts to all three bureaus from friends, family members, and my wife.

I don't beleive that Equifax is blocking these accounts from reporting as others in the myFICO fourms suggest and it would appear they are ; yet it seems to me the most reasonable explaination is that given all banks request to publish authorized user accounts to consumer credit files is the first, middle, and last name, address and birth date to furnish this data it's the most possible explaination that given I've already been told by only Equifax that multiple socials which are not mine obvioulsy are cross-linking my files somehow preventing the scoring system from properly calculating my data right and preventing me from having any authorized user accounts on my credit file since XX/XX/XXXX.

There can't be a problem with 7 different banks reporting XXXX  tradelines to my file the only common factor is Equifax as the other two credit bureaus are reporting this just fine with no issues what so ever.

I'd like Equifax to do something meaningful in resolving this issue as I've included the evidence from their own data sources that these accounts were reporting and now are no longer doing so. If I am to take the explanations for this issue at face value which Equifax has made I'd be forced to come to the conclusion they are intentionally blocking the reporting of these various tradelines and that is why I'm reaching out to the CFPB.

Equifax is not doing anything to resolve the issues which is a very important part of helping me achieve a normal credit file which affects too many things in an Americans life. The banks and Congress recognize the value of authorized user accounts as much as the power co-signers have in helping people for whatever the reasons ; to get their credit in order to the degree they don't have to pay an arm and a leg to do anything in the commercial world.

Please see if someone at the CFPB can translate this very simple matter to the folks at Equifax so they can fix this issue and so that I can start to see these tradelines back on my credit report as they were perfect before XX/XX/XXXX. The troubling thing for me in all of this is that Equifax acts as if nothing ever happened and yet I've provided evidence to the contrary in my included documents of this complaint and nothing seems to be happening.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation