Consumer complaint received 2025-03-20 00:00:00
Product: Credit reporting or other personal consumer reports — Credit reporting
Issue: Problem with a company's investigation into an existing problem — Their investigation did not fix an error on your report
Company: EQUIFAX, INC.
State: OR

Complaint narrative:
COMPLAINT SUMMARY : I paid my mortgage payment every month, on time, in full. 
XXXX XXXX committed billing mistakes for XXXX months, then discovered their own mistakes, then accused me of late payments, then reported to credit agencies that I was XXXX and XXXX  days late on my mortgage payment, even though I never missed a payment. 

COMPLAINT DETAILS : In XX/XX/XXXX, XXXX XXXX sold my mortgage to XXXX XXXX, and XXXX XXXX disabled my online mortgage payment portal. 

In XX/XX/XXXX, XXXX sent me messages saying they would create a mortgage account for me and send me a payment link. 

Later in XX/XX/XXXX, XXXX informed me that my online payment portal was available. On XX/XX/XXXX, I created an account on the XXXX website and viewed the invoice for my first mortgage payment to XXXX. The invoice was for {$740.00}, due by XX/XX/XXXX. 
I attached a screenshot of that invoice page to this complaint. 

In XXXX, I timely paid the {$740.00} amount due. 
Every month after XX/XX/XXXX, I have paid the mortgage payment to XXXX, in full, on time. 
I never missed a payment in any month, and never made a late payment. 
I attached a screen shot of my XXXX payment history to this complaint. 

During XXXX, XXXX, XXXX, XXXX, and early XXXX of XXXX, XXXX never sent me any message or notice of a late or missed payment. Since I was paying the mortgage every month, I had no reason to think anything was wrong. 

In XXXX XXXX, XXXX began sending me notices that my mortgage payment was late. I had never missed a payment, so I assumed that XXXX made an accounting error, and I began to communicate with XXXX, explaining that I never missed a payment, and they needed to fix this problem. 

During XXXX, XXXX, and XXXX, I created XXXX different tickets on the XXXX Customer Service page asking for resolution of this problem. 
Each time, XXXX responded with a message that I did not need to do anything else at this time, and, that their Research Team was investigating the problem. 
I attached screenshots of those chat messages to this complaint. 

I never received any response, explanation, or resolution from the XXXX Research Team in XXXX, XXXX, or the first XXXX weeks of XXXX. 

However, beginning in either XXXX or XXXX, without my knowledge, XXXX began to report to credit agencies that I was XXXX and XXXX days late on my mortgage payment. I did not know XXXX was doing this until my bank informed me that new items had appeared on my credit report. 

XXXXXXXX XXXX actions were unethical, misleading, unfair, and damaging to my credit rating. 
I paid my mortgage on time, in full, every month. 
Each month, I paid the amount that XXXX said was due. 
When XXXX began to say that I missed a payment, I worked in good faith to resolve the issue with XXXX, and XXXXXXXX XXXX replies to my tickets assured me that I did not need to do anything else until I received a response from the Research Team, which never came. 

If a lender tells a borrower to wait while the lender investigates a billing problem, but the simultaneously reports the borrower as being late on payments, that is unscrupulous conduct. It is unfair and harmful to consumers. 

In XX/XX/XXXX, during a phone call with a XXXX XXXX agent, we discovered that the source of the problem was the mistaken information on the very first XXXX payment invoice from XX/XX/XXXX. That XXXX invoice should have informed me that the amount due by XX/XX/XXXX was a double-payment of {$1400.00}, for XXXX and XXXX. 

After the XXXX phone call revealed the problem, I made XXXX XXXX mortgage payments to Rushmore to bring my account current, and then I made a timely payment in XXXX. The payment issue has been RESOLVED. 

XXXX did not discover their billing error for almost XXXX months. From XXXX through XXXX, XXXX never mentioned a late or missed payment. 
In XXXX and XXXX, they still did not mention any XXXX payment, they only told me that I missed a payment, to which I responded that I had never missed a payment in any month. 

When I asked them to fix the problem, they said they would investigate it and told me to wait until I heard back from the Research Team. But without my knowledge, they also started reporting my mortgage payment as XXXX or XXXX days late. UNETHICAL AND UNFAIR PRACTICE! 

If I was paying the mortgage every month, how could I be XXXX  days late? 
If I was paying every month, it is impossible that I was ever XXXX days late. 
If they told me I didn't need to do anything else while waiting for a finding from their Research Team, how could I be late on a payment? 
If their XXXX, XXXX, XXXX, and XXXX invoices all told me to pay {$740.00}, and I paid that amount each month, how can Rushmore say I was late if I was timely paying the amount they told me to pay? 

I never received any message or mailing from the Research Team until late XXXX, after the billing issue had been resolved. I only learned in late XXXX that XXXX had been reporting me to credit agencies for late mortgage payments.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation