Consumer complaint received 2022-11-12
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 received a letter from XXXX XXXX that one of the employee 's of their technology vendor downloaded personal financial information about me and that the employee was fired and an investigation was ongoing. XXXX XXXX indicated they use Equifax and I could contact them to try to protect my financial information from being used to commit fraud. The Equifax web site would not allow me to see my report online. It asked questions I did not know the answer to because I am XXXX XXXX XXXX and can not remember every detail from years ago like in XXXX when we last bought a vehicle. I tried to use their web site to freeze my credit in the hope this would protect me from fraud but that failed too. I called to talk to someone but could not get to a real live person. Eventually, I figured out and tried to do a freeze on the phone and I think that happened but I am not sure. Equifax is a terrible company because they allowed hackers to steal information back in XXXX and I wish our federal government allowed me to opt out of their service because as a consumer, I would never choose to do business with them because they are so poorly run and I can never get my credit report from them. I try to get my credit report free once a year and I can always get it online from XXXX and XXXX but Equifax always rejects my requests saying they can not verify my identify. If the CFPB would ask regulators to investigate Equifax to determine why they make it so hard for people to get their credit frozen and protected online and see their credit report to see if fraud has been committed, I would really appreciate it. Frankly, I wish our federal government would take over these credit bureaus and make their employees work for the government and then reform and improve their web sites and telephone customer service because Equifax is the worst and they have been for over a decade. Consumers need more regulation of this industry and I write our US Senators and Presidents in the White House about this every year. I do not want to pay for credit monitoring and identify theft protection service offered by Equifax because I am retired and living on a fixed income and will not waste money on a problem this industry created. They take my personal financial information, store it on their computers, make money off of my personal financial information and do not share any of their profits with me and then because they do not do a good job of protecting my private financial identify they expect me to pay them to do what they should be paying to do in the first place, prevent fraud and not allow people from XXXX and other countries to hack and steal our private information and then sell it to anyone and everyone willing to pay. Our credit bureau system puts our country and economy at risk and should be owned and operated by Homeland Security but instead we have these greedy for profit companies that create risk and problems for people and then expect them to pay to protect themselves. It is highway robbery on a massive scale for big companies like these to expect consumers to pay for their cost of doing business. They have far more money, capital and assets than I will ever have and they should fix their web pages, fix their phone support and improve their customer service. If I had a choice, I would not do business with Equifax and in a real free market capitalistic economy a company like this would not be in business and forced into bankruptcy or regulated out of existence. It is sad that no one in our government has done anything about this credit reporting agency.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation