Consumer complaint received 2023-03-11
Product: Credit reporting, credit repair services, or other personal consumer reports — Credit reporting
Issue: Unable to get your credit report or credit score — Other problem getting your report or credit score
Company: TRANSUNION INTERMEDIATE HOLDINGS, INC. (WA)

TransUnion has enough information to impersonate any of us and the information it sells decides where we can work, who we can borrow from, what we can borrow, and the interest rates at which we borrow. TransUnion credit scores are pretty much a quantitative value of how " good and trustworthy '' of a person you and I are. 

One would expect such an important company to be held against the highest ethical, accuracy, and transparency standards... But clearly, Transunion is nowhere near the bar. 

Between XX/XX/2023 and XX/XX/2023, my TransUnion credit score ( as seen through my XXXX bank app ) dropped by XXXX from XXXX to XXXX. My XXXX Credit score dropped by a similar number as well, but this complaint is focused on TransUnion. It is funny because my revolving utilization was lower than previous months and I didn't do anything to lower my credit score. 

The only thing that comes to my mind is that I requested a credit line increase from my XXXX bank. But XXXX uses soft inquiry and should not have lowered my credit score. In fact, it should have increased my score because it reduced my utilization. 

I need to understand why my credit score decreased, so I called XXXX Customer support. XXXX customer support confirmed their soft inquiry shouldn't have harmed my credit score and advised me to call TransUnion ( where they get my credit score ) and gave me their phone number : XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX. 

I called TransUnion. The call felt like a scam. They asked for my Zip Code, full social security number, and date of birth. I checked the phone number during the call and managed to confirm through XXXX XXXX that it was a legitimate number, so I answered the questions. I was forwarded to TransUnion Customer support without issue. 

The first thing the customer support agent asked was " where did I get my credit score from? '' I answered " XXXX. '' She went quiet for a couple of minutes and didn't respond no matter how much I asked if " she was there? '' She then hanged up on me... 

I made another call. But I didn't feel safe sharing my SSN again and I don't feel I should share it like that. This is sensitive information and they " record the phone call for quality control purpose. '' So, I'm not convinced my information is appropriately collected or stored. 

I tried getting my credit score from www.annualcreditreport.com. I couldn't get my XXXX and XXXX credit reports at the time ( they said to try on a business day, so I will do that later ), but I got the TransUnion report ( they didn't give me access to my credit score, though ). I didn't see a possible reason for my score to have dropped. 

Here are my complaints. 
- I have a right to freely get all the information that TransUnion reports on me. That includes my report, my score, and why my score changed. It is suspicious to me that TransUnion and other credit bureaus ' Credit Score algorithms are not publicly disclosed and it is even worse that TransUnion customer support doesn't bother answering my questions and hangs up on me. 
- For a company that is trusted with our identities, I don't think it is okay for their phone calls to sound so much like a scam or to ask for PII like SSN on a phone call. What I provided them just on that call is enough to steal my identity and I felt like the customer support agent was probably in XXXX, so the information probably didn't even stay in the US. It feels like PII is unscrupulously collected, shared, and stored. Clearly no action was made to ensure their calls stand out from scams. They could have confirmed my identity by sending me a text message with a temporary code instead of asking for extremely sensitive and hard to change PII like SSN. 
- It seems like my experience is a common one, looking at XXXX XXXX 's and other websites ' reviews. I don't understand why a company so unscrupulous with PII and disrespectful of consumer 's right to know their financial records is one of three trusted sources of our financial trustworthiness. In the long term, I don't want TransUnion to be used to assess my financial trustworthiness anymore. It frustrates me that I have no control on that. 



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