Consumer complaint received 2017-05-27
Company: EQUIFAX, INC.
State: CA
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: Investigation took more than 30 days

Complaint:
On   XXXX   XXXX  , 2 017 , I happened to do a   XXXX   search on my name and discovered a disturbing advertisement on a page hosted by a company that evidently gathers information about people from public records and offers it for sale without their knowledge. I have a hyphenated last name that I have had since birth and never changed or used in any other form, but this website was offering to sell information about me and all of my family members, and also connecting me to people with criminal records (which I do not have) by deceptively insinuating in the advertisement that I was some sort of unscrupulous person who could be traced through various aliases.
  In order to connect me with and list all of my family members, and also to list my age, and cities I have lived in in this advertisement, the company had to use my full hyphenated last name, particularly in connecting me with family members listed with the proper last name. But in order to connect me with the criminal record also listed in the ad, the company had to drop part of my name. I noticed an opt-out procedure on the company's website, but was reluctant to contact and provide any additional information to an enterprise that was so obviously deceptive and unscrupulous.
  During the next few days, I filed complaints with the FTC, the California Attorney General's Office, and the FCC. I also started reaching out for legal advice, which eventually led me to the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, and also (prior to that) to a need to check my credit reports for accuracy. I learned that it was possible for me to check all of my credit reports for free once a year through a website a t  XXXX ,  which I set about doing on   XXXX   XXXX  , 2017.
  In order to see my credit reports immediately online, each of the   XXXX    credit agencies required that I answer questions about past addresses and the like. The process was quite smooth with   XXXX   and  XXXX . So I was able to see my credit reports right away with each of these agencies, learn to my surprise that all of these permutations of my name and even more were listed along with the rest of my background information, and also quickly and easily arranged over the telephone to have the inaccurate versions of my name removed.
  Unilike with  XXXX  and  XXXX , however, all of the questions posed in the Equifax online validation procedure were totally unrelated to me. So I answered in the negative to all of them and was denied online access to my Equifax credit report. This (in combination with the information about me being advertised unscrupulously) raised concerns of identity fraud for me. So I placed a fraud alert on my credit reports and telephoned Equifax's dispute department.
  The dispute representative at Equifax was able to remove all of the incorrect versions of my name except for one. Evidently Equifax had decided that my actual name was a "former name" and that my newly adopted last name consisted only of the second half of the hyphenated name that I have had all of my life. I asked how they had come to this conclusion. I was told that the information had come from a creditor, but for some reason they were unable to inform me of who this creditor was and when this change had come about.
  I informed the dispute representative that this was unacceptable and was transferred to the fraud department. After I had waited on hold for somewhere between five and ten minutes, a fraud representative answered the phone and informed me that the only way I could change the information was to fax copies of government issued picture IDs to Equifax. I did so that evening from an  XXXX  store where I was able to locate a fax machine, because they do not accept scanned images by e-mail.
  I also left a highly dissatisfied online survey, but called back the next day to make sure it was understood that I was absolutely infuriated by the intransigent company policies that seemed to be making me a target for unscrupulous online nonsense, but not by the people I spoke with, who despite being courteous and seeming genuinely concerned, seemed also saddled with administering such intransigence.
  During my call, the Equifax representative I spoke with suggested that I purchase a subscription to one of their services that would inform me whenever there was a change to my credit report. I decided to do so, even though it felt like I was rewarding them for their intransigence, because it seemed like the closest I could come to figuring out, in the short term anyway, whether or not I was actually being victimized by some sort of fraud (over and above the deceptively unscrupulous advertising mentioned above).
  A little more than a week after faxing my information to Equifax, I called the dispute department again to ascertain if the changes had been made. After taking several minutes to check, the representative informed me that the fax I had sent more than a week earlier had arrived. The copies of my identification had not come through clearly enough to be usable, he said. But the introductory letter I had sent with it was quite clear.
  I was furious once again that I had not been informed of this, and probably would not have known at all if I had not called and asked. On looking back at the image copies I sent, I realized that they had been created on a color scanner, and that perhaps this was the problem in sending them as a black and white fax. So I subsequently sent them to an Equifax postal address that the dispute representative supplied during this late   XX/XX/XXXX   call. I was informed that once the information was received, it could take between 30 and 45 days to make a change.
  It is now l ate  XX/XX/XXXX  and  I have cancelled my subscription to the Equifax service that essentially informs me whenever my credit report is accessed. A large part of this is due to the anger I experience every time they contact me, because their communication is still always addressed to this newly truncated version of my last name. And all of the credit report copies I have received still list my actual name under "Formerly known as."
  All of this is occurring at a time when I  have been applying for both jobs and a mortgage with organizations that routinely ask permission to access my credit reports to certify not only my credit worthiness, but also the trustworthiness of my character. It is bad enough that an unscrupulous organization has the right to sully my character with deceptive advertising, at least according the the form-letter response I got from the California Attorney General's office.
  But to have one of the  XXXX  major credit agencies blatantly telling both potential employers and lenders that the name I gave them on my application is a former alias, totally inaccurately, based on information they are unwilling to share, and for who knows how long without my knowledge (I would not have known if I hadn't checked) is totally frustrating and infuriating to say the least. This is particularly so after I have repeatedly called, provided information and even subscribed to one of their services to try to both fix problem and ascertain the extent of the damage.
  To make matters worse, the building in which I live has recently experienced a problem of mailboxes being broken into. I am sure this has nothing to do with Equifax. But concerning issues of identity theft and fraud, this simply increases the possibility of unscrupulous characters (such as the companies with unscrupulously deceptive Internet ads) finding and taking advantage of the type of erroneous information that Equifax seems to be both making available and also extremely slow to change once informed.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation