Gone East: Equifax has Mike Walsh's Credit File Screwed Up, What a Surprise

February 16, 2004

Equifax has Mike Walsh's Credit File Screwed Up, What a Surprise

Mike Walsh has begun an adventure in attempting verify his credit report with Equifax.

They then flash me the dreaded message. We cannot verify your identity, please call our verification department at 800-555-xxxx.

So I call and talk to the nice lady and she said "No problem, this happens all the time. Just give me your previous mailing address." I give her my previous address and there is a pregnant pause on her side of the line. Obviously, I've given the "wrong" answer.

"Mr. Walsh, could you give me the name of the company that holds your car loan and your approximate monthly payment." I don't have a car loan. I pay cash for my cars and tell her so. Clearly, another wrong answer. "Well, Mr. Walsh, we seem to be having a little problem here. We'll just need some additional information to verify your identity."

This sort of thing doesn't surpise me at all. But, as always, it leaves me dismayed. The despicable invasion of privacy that these companies profit from is only the tip of the iceberg. The bigger scandal should be the nearly criminally-negligent standards they have regarding the accuracy of their files.

Posted by jghiii at February 16, 2004 12:13 PM

Comments

Posted by: Sean on February 17, 2004 10:13 PM

I deal with this type of crap all the time. I've seen a few people with credit scores that range from 790 to 650. The Credit Agencies fat finger SSN's and other important info ALL the time. You can tell when it shows up on one repositories list and not the other two.

A few of my clients couldn't refinance their homes at the bottom of the market this past summer because one of the credit agencies have wrong information and by the time they fix it, the rates went back up. They had to take a rate increase of 1/8th to 1/4 of a percent. But now that rates are back down they lucked out.