Consumer complaint received 2020-10-07 00:00:00
Product: Credit reporting, credit repair services, or other personal consumer reports — Credit reporting
Issue: Problem with fraud alerts or security freezes — 
Company: EQUIFAX, INC.
State: MD

Complaint narrative:
After Equifaxs data breach disaster in 2017, I froze my credit reports at Equifax and the two other rating agencies. I recently applied for a new credit card. In advance of the application, I unfroze my XXXX and XXXX credit reports, but was unable to do so w

ith Equifax ( details in the next paragraph ). The credit card company used Equifax and tried to access my credit report but could not, and so did not approve the application. Both before and after the credit card application, I have been unable to unfreeze my Equifax report, and indeed have been essentially unable to make contact with a live person at Equifax, as Equifax has seemed to create a process to stifle any interaction with consumers. When I initially tried to log into my myEquifax.com account online, Equifax apparently rejected one or more of the answers to the verification questions, and said I would have to receive a verification code in the U.S. mail and then go through the login process with that code. I received the code yesterday but the website kept rejecting the login attempt, stating it was an incorrect code. I tried calling Equifax this morning. On the first attempt, after 15-20 minutes of voice menu prompts and further verification questions, I could not get through to a live person. I tried a second time and, after another 15-20 minutes of rigmarole, I did get through to someone ; after taking down my name, the Equifax rep. started to tell me something but, the instant I started to ask a question, he hung up ( this was about 15 seconds after, on the second or third attempt, he successfully got my name correct ). I will add that the representative had a thick foreign accent and sounded as if he was in a foreign call center ; if true, that would be very disturbing given the extremely sensitive information Equifax handles and its horrid history of
protecting the data it collects without consumers consent.

Beyond the difficulty Im now having getting my credit card application approved, Im concerned that my Equifax report is now, as a practical matter, frozen in perpetuity with no way to get it unfrozen. Despite the
way it treated users data three years ago, Equifax still makes it virtually impossible for consumers to deal with the company and get matters resolved. Its voice mail system seems designed to make it difficult for consumers to get through to anyone at the company ( if you click a phone key or answer the question vocally too soon, you get booted off the call ), and the telephone representatives are generally uninformed and often have trouble with English ( I know this from a similar episode my husband had about a month ago with his Equifax report ; he, too, had to deal with multiple agents with thick foreign accents, all of whom sounded as if they were in a foreign call center ). For what its worth, I have not had any issues or problems with XXXX  or XXXX.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation