Consumer complaint received 2025-01-02 00:00:00
Product: Credit reporting or other personal consumer reports — Credit reporting
Issue: Incorrect information on your report — Account status incorrect
Company: EQUIFAX, INC.
State: NJ

Complaint narrative:
On XX/XX/year> my secured credit card with XXXX reported that I was delinquent to my XXXX  and equifax credit report and brought my credit score down by XXXX. I immediately called XXXX  to dispute this because the way they operate their secured credit cards I have never been delinquent nor have I had to make any payments on the secured card. Let me explain to give you the correct idea of how they operate and why this has brought me here to place a complaint because of my credit score dropping so many points. The way they do things is they give us the ability to move money from the checking account to the secured credit card account and then we pay for things as we go, they do not convert the money deposited into the secured credit card account into a security deposit which is the common theme amongst secured credit cards, and then a credit limit would normally be established and we would use that credit limit and normally pay a monthly payment. However XXXX  does not operate like the common way other secured credit cards do as I just stated, they allow us to move money into the secured card account and pay for things which decreases our balance and then we can top it up whenever we please. They also have a feature called safer credit building which automatically pays our secured credit card monthly minimum payment account for us. Now how this relates to me and why the way they operate is a detriment to my credit reporting are XXXX different reasons for this complaint amongst a few other reasons I will be stating as well. 

First of all, the safer credit building option was something I never knew they had, so as the months went on I kept seeing on my account that my secured credit card was paid for the month but I never made any payments on it because there was no need to make a minimum payment because they never required it, because it wasnt how they operated nor was I emailed or notified saying they needed a monthly payment. It wasnt until XX/XX/year> that I received a delinquent status that I called XXXX  to find out why that happened if us consumers do not need to make payments on the card. They said my automatic safer credit building option had been turned off and so the account did not register that I was making any payments and so it reported me delinquent. I asked why did it turn off because I never even knew it existed and they said they did not know. They taught me how to go into my settings and look for the safer credit building option and turn it back on to automatic. I said fine so I did that but I also asked why do they report delinquent if we dont make any payments on the card, and why this safer credit building option even existed if its not even real or a legitimate process of paying the secured credit card, they replied by saying it was just a way for them to keep track of the secured credit card reporting on their back end process. I complained how that affected my credit and that they shouldnt be reporting people as delinquent if that features has issues such as turning off on its own or if its going to cause credit to decrease based on missed payments when there are no payments to be made to begin with. I asked for more details on how the safer credit building automatic payment option worked and they said they could not provide any more details other than thats how their back end process did things, they said the way the card works is we put money on the card and use it as we go and then they sum up the amount of money we spent on the card and they treat that as the minimum monthly payment. So if we put in {$100.00} and spent {$30.00} on purchasing things with it, then they report to the credit agency that our monthly minimum payment on the card was {$30.00}. They also report to the credit agencies the balance left on the card as the credit limit on the secured card. I asked them to fix my credit reporting delinquent status and they said they could not do anything about it, I asked to speak to a manager and the manager also could not give me more details and could not do anything about fixing the credit reporting status even after I explained how their safer credit building option feature was turned off on my app and that because payments on the card doesnt exist it should not report to my credit that I am delinquent on payments because that is an fcra violation and the manager continued that they were not going to fix the credit reporting issue that decreased my credit XXXX points. At that point I was very frustrated and I cursed out the manager and hung up the phone and then I received an email stating they were giving me a XXXX strike out of XXXX strikes to close my account for speaking innappropriately to their customer service manager. Afterwards I disputed the delinquent status on the XXXX  secured card with my XXXX  and equifax and 30 days later it came back as changed to XXXX late and the delinquent was removed. During that time they also reported to my XXXX  as delinquent status and that also dropped XXXX points and I disputed it as well. As I did these disputes XXXX would email me saying they were in receipt of my disputes and replied back to the agencies. My XXXX  and equifax went back up about XXXX points and I am still currently waiting on the XXXX  dispute results. Even with these changes of the 30days late reporting is innacurate and invalid because there are no payments to be made on the account to begin with. How could I be late on an account that requires no payments. 

The biggest issue of all this just recently happened. First of my safer credit building option was turned on and I made sure it was on since this issue happened in XXXX. Now XX/XX/XXXX my XXXX  credit went down another XXXX points and my equifax went down another XXXX points. This was all because XXXX reported again that I was late on my payments to the secured card, this time by 60 days. So the safer credit building option being turned on did not do anything and they continued to report my account as late and delinquent even with the automatic payments feature set to on, I actually went into the settings and had to manually click pay balance which does not do anything either, it just says congratulations you paid your balance for the month, it does not take any of my money from any of my accounts to pay the secured card. Like I said before these illegitimate payments made on the card because of their back end process are hurting my score because its being reported as late, when in reality there are no payments to be made. Not only that, but the automatic safer credit building option did not even register my account as paid for the month so their feature is also not working properly and is hurting my credit. And its hurting my credit significantly! 

Furthermore, they are also reporting the credit limit as the balance on my secured card. The problem with this is that because we use the money put into the account as we go, if I put in {$100.00} in one month, the credit limit gets reported as that {$100.00} if it falls on the correct date that the reporting happens. But then after using the card and the balance dropping to {$30.00} then they report to the credit agency that the credit limit is now {$30.00}, but they report it as a decrease in my credit limit balance which significantly impacts my credit negatively. Not only that!, but they also report the {$30.00} balance or the {$100.00} balance, or whatever money is in the account at the time, as a High Credit Limit balance which also impacts my score negatively because its basically saying that I have used all the credit limit on the card. Meaning, if my balance was {$30.00} then my total credit limit is {$30.00} ( and so on for whichever amount of money ). But the biggest problem with this is that there is no credit limit on the card like any regular credit card. Its not {$30.00} balance out of a {$30.00} credit limit ( $ XXXX {$30.00} ), or its not {$100.00} balance out of {$100.00} credit limit ( $ XXXX {$100.00} ). And neither is it {$30.00} balance out of {$100.00} credit limit ( $ XXXX {$100.00} ). There is no credit limit on the card, I could put in {$1000.00} or {$5000.00} and they would consider that the credit limit and report it as XXXX using 100 % of my credit when the reality is the money gets put into the secured card and used basically like a debit card balance. So this is the other issue with them. Below I will outline the current issues to recap and hopefully we can fix these problems and fix my credit back to my XXXX score or I will pursue legal action against XXXX  and the credit reporting agencies that did not verify all this same information I presented to them and allowed my score to keep decreasing based on these errors and false payment reporting issues from XXXX!! 

XXXX. XXXX  reports to credit agencies any balance of money deposited or leftover on the secured credit card as a high credit use and using 100 % of credit limit on the card when it is in fact just money deposited into the account without a limit. 

XXXX. XXXX reports to credit agencies they decrease my credit limit balance based on the amount of money that is leftover on the balance of the secured card. Every month is a different credit limit balance on my credit report when in reality its the money that I deposit to the account or that is leftover after using the card. 

XXXX. XXXX  reports to my credit agencies I am delinquent, 30days late, and now 60days late on the monthly payment when in reality there is NO monthly payment to be made, and even after using the safer credit building option for automatic monthly payments -or- manually paying the monthly minimum payment, they are still reporting my status as delinquent and late. 

XXXX. The way XXXX operates their secured credit card is like a debit card and not an actual credit card. They have no security deposit that establishes a final credit limit on the card. Therefore, they have no real credit limit to report. They have no real credit limit established. And they have no real reason to report credit limit decreased or high credit Limit usage. 

I have attached pictures of my credit score changes over the months from XXXX to now before and after XXXX  innacurate reporting. Also pictures of my credit reports with XXXX  credit reporting, XXXX  emails to me, the feature for safer credit building app and the false monthly payments and other things. 

The resolution I am looking for is to change my XXXX  secured card payment status to never being late and removing the delinquency from my XXXX, XXXX and equifax credit agencies. To remove the high credit limit status of using 100 % of my credit and to stop XXXX  from reporting they have decreased my credit limit every month as based on the use of the balance on the card because reporting a decrease in credit lowers my credit score.

Company response to consumer: Closed with non-monetary relief