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Equifax - countless violations

Monday, October 01, 2007

Equifax - debt collection services include continual monitoring

I just noticed the Equifax ad in the Netbank article and decided to have a look.

Solutions

Skip Locate Solutions

NEW! FirstSearch with Portfolio Monitoring continuously monitors your collections portfolio for name changes, new addresses and/or telephone numbers on those consumers who are hard to find due to unavailable, inaccurate or outdated information.

...

The million dollar question:  will the consumer be informed that credit report data has been provided to a collector?  Could somebody please find out?

And as I’ve been recommending for years, never provide your physical address on any applications.  Get a post-office or private mailbox, use a virtual telephone/fax number.  You have to do that BEFORE you lose your job, get cancer, or have whatever other emergency preventing you from paying your bills.

Credit Report Solutions

...

Better determine a consumer’s ability to pay with information on open credit, the presence of mortgage trades and other credit data reflective of liquidity.

If you have large collections, do NOT settle anything unless you have to.  Make your report look as bad as possible.  Don’t open accounts, play dead.

Monday, June 18, 2007

6/19/07 FCRA hearings in Congress - how to save webcast?

6/19/07:  Full Committee Hearing

Full Committee Hearing

Will Examine Consumers’ Ability to Dispute and Change Inaccurate Information

Tuesday, June 19, 2007, 10:00 a.m.,2128 Rayburn House Office Building

Click here to watch live webcast of this hearing.

Financial Services Committee to Hold Hearing on Consumer Credit Reports

Washington, DC – Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee today announced that the committee will hold a hearing entitled “Credit Reports: Consumers’ Ability to Dispute and Change Inaccurate Information.” The hearing will examine factors that continue to contribute to inaccurate consumer credit reports and evaluate the adequacy of the consumer dispute process under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).  In addition, the Committee will hear recommendations for improving the process and efforts that furnishers, credit bureaus and the regulators are taking to improve the accuracy of credit report information and will review the status of key rule makings and studies mandated by the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 (FACTA) related to the accuracy of information furnished to consumer reporting agencies and the adequacy of the dispute resolution process.

Witness List & Prepared Testimony:

Panel One

Ms. Lydia Parnes, Director, Bureau of Consumer Protection, Federal Trade Commission
Ms. Sandra Braunstein, Director, Division of Consumer and Community Affairs, Federal Reserve System

Panel Two

Mr. Evan Hendricks, Editor/Publisher, Privacy Times
Mr. Stuart Pratt, President and CEO, Consumer Data Industry Association
Ms. Chi Chi Wu, Staff Attorney, National Consumer Law Center
Ms. Anne P. Fortney, Partner, Hudson Cook, LLP
Mr. Leonard A. Bennett, Consumer Litigation Associates, P.C.

Available Member Statements:

Printed Hearing:
The printed version of this hearing will be posted as soon as it is available.

It’s nice that they’ll post the transcript, but I’d sure like to have the VIDEO.  I just looked at C-SPAN and couldn’t find anything about it.

If someone knows how to SAVE the live webcast, I’d sure like to know how to get that done on a windows system.

And since it’s unlikely that I’ll figure it out by 7 am (my time) tomorrow morning, maybe somebody could save it for posting here?

Ultimately, I’d like to create free online documentaries for consumers as well as legislators and with excerpts of this and other hearings along with some screenshots of what REALLY happens when consumers dispute.

Your HELP is appreciated!

I spent hours yesterday and today just to find out who the collector is for two unidentified collections.  From the Equifax myFICO report:

Collection on debt to: Not on Record
The collection agency “472yc00000” was hired to collect a debt of $187 originally owed to “Not on Record” on account number “[redacted]XXXX”.

Collection agency [?] 472yc00000
Original balance [?] $187
Current balance (as of Jan 01,2007) [?] $206
Status (as of Jan 01, 2007) [?] Unpaid
Date assigned [?] Apr 01, 2005
Date reported [?] Jan 01, 2007
Date last active [?] Sep 01, 2004
Original lender [?] Not on Record
Account number [?] [redacted]XXXX
Account holder [?] Individual [emphasis added]

So before one even begins to talk about disputes, wouldn’t it make sense to talk about the FACT that Fair Isaac has been selling these worthless reports for year and years?

The screenshots of the INCOMPLETE reports

Why is nobody addressing the fact that ALL tri-merged reports are INCOMPLETE?  Why are there NO class actions?

So I recommended to my client to order the $2 trial for PrivacyGuard, but even there the collector’s and original creditor’s identity was missing.

I told my client that we could make some assumptions or to buy the Equifax direct report.  Fortunately he asked exactly which report to order. 

I had a look at the Equifax site.  They’re pushing the tri-merged INCOMPLETE reports.  They no longer offer the free one month trial for their Gold monitoring service.  I tried to find out whether you could order it for just one month or whether there’s a minimum subscription period.  Couldn’t find the info, so I went through the order process until I got to the terms.

The Equifax terms are mostly incomprehensible and don’t even relate to the product I tried to order, the Gold Credit Monitoring.  But I noticed this interesting term in paragraph 10:

You agree that You will not use any robot, spider or other similar device to monitor or copy any pages of this Site or any content or information accessible through this Site.  [emphasis added]

Equifax essentially admits that they’re crooks and they don’t want people to keep track of their site and the changes they make.  As I already learned in my litigation, Equifax and all CRAs cheerfully lie and deny.

So for good measure, below are the ridiculous, bizarre and incomprehensible Equifax terms you have to agree to as of 6/18/07:

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Equifax to buy payroll service TALX - to sell the payroll info to creditors and collectors?

From the press release:

Equifax Announces Agreement to Acquire TALX Corporation in a Transaction Valued at $1.4 Billion

ATLANTA and ST. LOUIS, Feb. 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/—Equifax Inc. (NYSE: EFX) and TALX Corporation (Nasdaq: TALX) announced today that
Equifax will acquire TALX in a stock and cash transaction valued at approximately $1.4 billion, including the assumption of debt. The
acquisition is subject to certain regulatory approvals, approval by TALX shareholders and customary closing conditions.

...

Based in St. Louis, TALX is a leading provider of employment verification and related human resource/payroll services, serving over
9,000 clients in the U.S., including 385 companies in the FORTUNE 500. TALX provides a wide spectrum of products and services including employment and
income verification, pay reporting, hiring, and employment tax management services.

...

The acquisition of TALX is aligned with Equifax’s long-term growth strategy of expanding into new markets and acquiring proprietary data sources. [emphasis added]

...

UNBELIEVABLE!!!

Is there anything that would prevent Equifax from including the employment info in their consumer credit reports?  To provide it to creditors and collectors?

Friday, January 12, 2007

Dispute factually, review your Equifax investigation results carefully, then sue!

From my review of a client’s Equifax dispute results [replaced names with “xxx"]:

1) XXX—this collection has been disputed with XXX and it failed to validate the alleged debt. Please immediately delete this collection.

“We have researched your concerns and our conclusions are:

The disputed items xxx, xxx”

It’s still reported with the furnisher dispute notation as previously, slightly higher balance.

2) XXX—please delete all late payments after the account was charged off in 2001.

“We have researched your concerns and our conclusions are:

The disputed items xxx, xxx”

Apparently Equifax did not forward the dispute to XXX, still reports the lates to 10/06.

This is the reason for score factor:

The time since your most recent past due payment or derogatory indicator is too recent

There is evidence of a late payment on your file as recent as 3 months ago.

3) XXX, BOTH accounts—please delete all undated late payments.

account xxxxx “Equifax verified that the account belongs to you”

The other account was deleted.

4) XXX—please report the correct credit limit of $500.

“Equifax verified that the item belongs to you.”

You can only wonder what drugs the idiots at Equifax are on.  They get disputes for 5 accounts and screw up ALL of them.  Apparently Equifax ROUTINELY relays factual disputes of OBVIOUSLY incorrect data to the data furnisher as “not my account” disputes.

This explains why so often disputes result in DELETION instead of correction, lowering the credit scores by shortening account history.

“We have researched your concerns and our conclusions are:

The disputed items xxx, xxx”

I just replaced the initials of the furnishers with the “xxx”, but other than that, it’s EXACTLY what Equifax had on the dispute results.

Don’t I wish I was a lawyer licensed in Cal. so I could sue Equifax and depose them. 

I’d sure like to see their explanation for this extraordinary incompetence.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Filed appeal to 9th Circuit re. Capital One, Target & Equifax refusal to report credit limit

Paid my $455 fee and the saga will continue.  I’ll try to take this to the Supreme Court if necessary and if I can afford it.

There are a number of filings to post, but I’ve been so busy - will update once I get around to it.