Consumer complaint received 2025-01-17 00:00:00
Product: Credit reporting or other personal consumer reports — Credit reporting
Issue: Credit monitoring or identity theft protection services — Didn't receive services that were advertised
Company: Experian Information Solutions Inc.
State: NJ

Complaint narrative:
I received a phone call on XX/XX/XXXX in the early afternoon by a person claiming to be an Experian employee. He was " alerting '' me that someone had tried to establish a credit card under my name with XXXX Bank with a credit line of {$6000.00} and he was asking if I had initiated that request. When I replied, " No '', he thanked me and mentioned something about marking the transaction as fraud. He then read off MY ENTIRE SSN and asked me to verify it was mine and I replied in the affirmative. He then read off XXXX credit card numbers- one from XXXX Bank and the other was XXXX. He read off the entire numbers to the cards and asked me to verify them by telling me the expiration dates on my cards which I did and then my inner alerts kicked in after he said something about getting a soft pull credit and with which he started looking at other items apparently on the report and asking additional questions. I was travelling in a car with my son and road noise and line static made hearing difficult and when he asked about another card, I replied that I was travelling and the information about other items was back at my house. He stated he could call me back if that was ok and I agreed. 
After about XXXX hours I had returned home and called XXXX, my credit monitoring service and reported the incident and was immediately informed NONE of the XXXX credit agencies make direct calls to individuals which was a revelation to me. They immediately placed a fraud block on my credit for a year and advised me to change all cards and notify banks, etc., which I have done over the past 2 days. 
The individual did call back about an hour later- on a different phone line- and asked if I remembered our conversation and I replied " Yes '' and he immediately started trying to pick up where we had ended the earlier call. I interrupted him and said I had reported him to the police ( a lie ) and had called XXXX about the prior call. He seemed to immediately agitated and defensive on the phone and brazenly said "... well calling the police won't do you any good because they ... '' at which point Interrupted and said that I didn't want to hear any more because the Fraud block on my credit had been posted. and that I knew he was a scam XXXX. I ended the call while he was still trying to protest. 
Since the event, I have applied and received my credit reports from the XXXX major services and there was indeed a soft pull of my credit to Experian on XX/XX/XXXX. While I do have all XXXX reports, I was unable to get the one from Experian after 2 days of trying while using the XXXX site but did finally obtain it by going directly to their site. 
I have tried following up with Experian but it is EXTREMELY difficult to find a working number for them that allowed me to speak to a live person. In fact, the number in THEIR OWN CREDIT REPORT TO ME was a non-working number. I finally did manage to get to their fraud resolution department via transfer but was told that they could do anything until I had a fraud report number and was transferred to the department responsible. While the recording stated that they were experiencing a high volume of calls, my call would be answered by the next agent and wait times were about XXXX minutes. It was over XXXX minutes later that my call was disconnected and I was not given that number to try to call back.

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