Consumer complaint received 2023-06-27
Product: Credit reporting, credit repair services, or other personal consumer reports — Credit reporting
Issue: Problem with a credit reporting company's investigation into an existing problem — Their investigation did not fix an error on your report
Company: Sequium Asset Solutions, LLC (PA)

In XX/XX/XXXX, I contacted XXXX XXXX XXXX - of whom I had been a customer for over 25 years. to request a replacement SIM card for my daughter, who is on my family account. I was then engaged, by an XXXX XXXX XXXX employee, in a 1.5-hour conversation, during which he attempted to sell me new phones, new accounts, etc. ad nauseum and infinitum. I said " No '' to all of it. I just wanted one SIM card. The SIM card, which was to be delivered within two days, never arrived. I did not buy a phone. However, XXXX XXXX XXXX started billing me for an entire new account ( including an additional phone number, which I neither wanted nor needed ). I always buy unlocked phones directly from the manufacturer, so I can determine which cellular provider I will choose. 

When the charges started showing up on my bill, I contacted XXXX XXXX XXXX immediately to request that they be removed from my account. I was shuffled from department to department - frequently to the various companies to which XXXX XXXX XXXX has outsourced customer service, or phone insurance, and/or more. Through diversion and inaction, XXXX XXXX XXXX simply refused to remove these unwanted services/charges. I have spent hours and hours and hours on calls, in chat, and etc. with them. Several times, a rep. would tell me : " This is fraud. I am not allowed to handle that. '' They would either route my call to the Fraud department, which would not pick up, or give me a phone number for the Fraud department, and when I called, I would get a recorded announcement indicating that the group was too busy to pick up. Voice mail was unavailable : I could call back later. Which I did : to no avail. I also visited an XXXX XXXX XXXX  store in person, to request that this account be deleted. The staff told me they could not do anything and gave me the number for customer service, again. I requested, each time, that my complaint be noted. 
Afraid of the consequences of not paying an incorrect bill, I made full payment every month, up to the point when I gave my business to a better provider ( XXXX ). Changing providers was the only way I could get them to stop billing me for services I did not want and did not use. I called in XX/XX/XXXX, after I had left XXXX, because I was worried that their mistake would hurt my credit rating. I have attached the transcript of the chat conversation I had with XXXX at that point. Then, as I feared, in XX/XX/XXXX, I got a letter from a debt collector, XXXX XXXX. I wrote them immediately to say the debt was not valid, and heard nothing further from them. I thought it was over, but NO : I checked my XXXX score last week and discovered to my horror that it had dropped over XXXX points. Apparently, there was a new debt collector involved : Sequium Asset Solutions. I disputed the debt through XXXX, which had alerted me to the problem. Sequium " reviewed '' my dispute for - all of 2 days, if not less - then issued a " verified '' ruling- in other words, saying the debt was valid. They also claimed that I had been through credit counseling and made a payment plan, which is a bald-faced lie. These things simply did not happen, ever. Until I got that awful notice, I had never even heard of this company