Consumer complaint received 2020-12-12
Company: Experian Information Solutions 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: Their investigation did not fix an error on your report

Complaint:
At the beginning of the pandemic, I was working on my credit score, and when Experian 's Boost product didn't work, I had difficulty getting support from their outsourced representatives so on XX/XX/XXXX I threw a wide net out to whoever 's email address I could find that maybe could help met. I actually found one of the guys that created it and by the next day got executive office assistance that seemed hopeful. 

What Experian doesn't tell you in it's ads, website, or terms of service, is that you have to have 3 payments from the same bank account. If you change payment accounts, you'll have three months of non-payment show up on your credit report until 3 payments from another ( same ) account show up. And even though they already have the previous 3 payments reported, if you disconnect their access, they will remove the previous 3 payments as if the reported data was never received and thusly lower the average age of your accounts and lower your score. 

I was building my credit and alternating credit cards and finally got all of my utilities to show up on the card which I preferred. I'd followed up on XX/XX/XXXX and XX/XX/XXXX for updates hoping I'd have five months ( or more ) of Boosted payment history showing up after they fix the cross-monitoring issue. On XX/XX/XXXX, I contacted Experian because the 3 months of utility payments through XXXX for 4 different Boost eligible bills had posted to my linked XXXX account but not to my report. Thinking maybe if I delete the other accounts and then adding XXXX again it would fix it, but only one of the previous utilities showed up the second time and instead of adding a month to the payment history it changed the age of that account ( until 2 more payments show on on the old account ). The other 3 of my Boosted tradelines were deleted completely. Making only my most recent utility payments on XXXX appear on my report, the average age of my accounts had lowered as did my credit score. 

I sent them six months of utility payments via email so they could fix my reports manually while they figured out the problem with updating the XXXX payments and how to get the previous payments issue corrected. I had given them access monitor to 8 accounts and telling them since XXXX that people will pay their bills out of a checking account but if a disconnect comes up before a paycheck hits they may switch and charge the utility one month and go back to checking and that people should not have their scores lowered by this when Experian has access to all the accounts the consumer says they pay their utilities out of. Experian 's CEO was copied on these emails. 

I was panicking about some security deposits I was afraid I wouldn't get back because Experian still had not fixed the problem. I researched my rights and verified their website had been updated to let you know your score may be affected if you disconnect an old payment account, but still nothing on their website or in the Terms of Agreement specifies anything about the payments coming from the same account. But if it was just a glitch they were working on, still, there was nothing in the Terms that say they will not manually fix your credit file upon receipt of proper documentation nor is there anything that says the payment history can only be added to your credit file if the data is received electronically from recurring access to bank accounts. 

On XX/XX/XXXX, just before I was about to email my updated dispute, I received a call back explaining a possible fix for XXXX, I reminded her that I'd already tried that and that it caused the past payment history to be deleted and asked for supervisor to call me back. I filed another dispute by email using the FTC 's dispute template along with documentation supporting 7 months of payment history and more screenshots of before and after how Boost issues were adversely affecting my credit score and, citing the Terms of Agreement and the email thread of excuses over the 7 months, reminded them of the urgency pending that I may become homeless due to their inaction and that they should not be deleting positive information from credit reports if they have no disputes to the contrary. I emailed 12 executive employees including Experian 's CEO. 

On XX/XX/XXXX after no call back or response to my dispute, I emailed all the same executives and let them know I had a tracker on the email so I could see everyone that was opening my emails and ignoring my pleads for urgently needed and legally deserved help. 

On XX/XX/XXXX, the Supervisor of Compliance emailed me and cited the Terms of Agreement which specify their system inadequacies may prevent Boost from working properly. In response, I forwarded my concerns that Experian continued to refuse to correct my credit file after receiving proper support documentation to US Representative XXXX XXXX and copied the Supervisor of Compliance and Experian 's CEO. That email included the transcript of Experian 's CEO 's XX/XX/XXXX testimony in front of the House Committee on Financial Services hearing entitled Whos Keeping Score? Holding Credit Bureaus Accountable and Repairing a Broken System '' wherein he championed how his company 's Boost service worked, their response time for disputes, and his sworn commitment to 100 % accuracy of consumers ' credit files. 

The XX/XX/XXXX email as well as a XX/XX/XXXX follow-up were again ignored by Experian. As of XX/XX/XXXX, their Dispute Center website still says " all of your credit information is reported by lenders '', which is false for the Boost entries which correctly lists Experian as the contact for disputes since they are the reporting entity. And their Dispute Center is programmed such that the Boosted entries specifically can not be disputed or annotated with a consumer statement, but instead only allows deletions of the information, forcing disputes to be done in writing.

Company public response: Company has responded to the consumer and the CFPB and chooses not to provide a public response
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation