Please change the title to something along the lines of "Equifax customer service is ineffective"
Or you could make it even more simple and leave "customer service" out of it.
Reported difficulties getting help on Equifax's phone lines
61–70 of 125 posts
Re: Reported difficulties getting help on Equifax's phone lines
#62Let me save you a click: Different agents on different hotlines bounced him around. After 30+ minutes, an automated system took his SSN and signed him for a trial. Sort of. Because they kept getting disconnected from the system, they aren't sure if it actually worked. Seems Equifax is using the "plug fingers in ears and scream la la la la la" method.
Thank you!
Not sure why you're getting downvoted here.
Re: Reported difficulties getting help on Equifax's phone lines
#63I am tempted to say I am appalled by the utter disregard these credit reporting agencies have for consumers, but I am not really surprised. Coming from a country with a tradition of public institutions, it is amazing to see private credit reporting agencies in US, because this should be a public service from the Government.
The reason they have such contempt for you is that you're NOT THEIR CUSTOMER. Their customers are lenders looking for dirt on you. The only reason they talk to you, with overt disdain and reluctance, is the government says they have to.
We aren't their customer, but we are their golden goose.
Re: Reported difficulties getting help on Equifax's phone lines
#64I have spent a very large amount of time over the past few years attempting to correct Equifax's record of my information (all to the now-apparent end of reducing noise in the hacker's data). They somehow had my SSN associated with someone else, leading to a few rejected credit applications. Equifax customer service reps are very poorly trained. The singular goal of all Equifax employees with whom I interacted was to…
That's what most large call centers are like. When I worked in one the factors in your evaluation were: 1) "handle time" (i.e., time on the phone per customer) 2) callbacks within a set time period 3) customer surveys 4) spot checks of recordings for adherence to company policy. So naturally, if you have a difficult case the most logical thing to do is find some within-the-rules way to transfer the customer to someon…
So what are the ways around that? What were the frustrating loopholes in which reps were forced to deal with the customer's problem?
Re: Reported difficulties getting help on Equifax's phone lines
#65TL;DR: Equifax phone lines unhelpful for anything. Suggestion, from https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/6yv4gb/off... If you do nothing else, place an initial 90 day fraud alert on your file. This is free and will require lenders to contact you if someone (including yourself) tries to apply for credit. Government info. You only have to do this with one bureau in order for the alert to be placed on all t…
I was able to setup a 90 day alert with Transunion using the link you provided. It was a breeze to do so. However I noticed that even though I was already signed in to Transunion website, I had to sign in again.
The other thing I found confusing was that the website for doing this was different from the core Transunion website which was also different for Transunion's TrueIdentity website.
Overall, it's simply been confusing trying to figure out what steps to take and where/how to do them to abate negative effects of this data breach. It feels 'weird'/frustrating spending this amount of time/effort to fix issues which are due to someone else's laxity and when it seems like the responsible party is not doing as much but then I guess this is one sure and hard way to learn the lesson - you can't control what happens to you but you can control how you react to things.
Re: Reported difficulties getting help on Equifax's phone lines
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hopefully saving people some time - Equifax is "unable to process" online requests - which they tell you after your submit the form. And Transunion's website for fraud alerts is currently "temporarily unavailable".
Equifax processed my request OK and gave me a confirmation #. I'd suggest trying again.
Equifax gave me "Our system is currently unavailable".
Re: Reported difficulties getting help on Equifax's phone lines
#67TL;DR: Equifax phone lines unhelpful for anything. Suggestion, from https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/6yv4gb/off... If you do nothing else, place an initial 90 day fraud alert on your file. This is free and will require lenders to contact you if someone (including yourself) tries to apply for credit. Government info. You only have to do this with one bureau in order for the alert to be placed on all t…
None of the 3 links work for me. How difficult to save data from a form? I'm appalled by the technical capabilities of these crucial service providers..
Equifax worked, the other two failed for me
Re: Reported difficulties getting help on Equifax's phone lines
#68> I could set up a 90-day fraud alert that would force creditors to call me — at a number of my choosing — before agreeing to open any new accounts in my name. This should be the default, for everyone, for free. If banks don't want to do the bare minimum to verify your identity, the liability for identity theft should be on them and not you.
I'm professionally involved with this, so at this point I'm obligated to say that the following is my personal opinion and in no way representative of my employer.
Banks use a lot of information to correlate and verify customer identity. The process is called KYC, Know Your Customer [0]. The problem is that this process relies on exactly the information present in a database like Equifax's. If they did perform verification calls, they would be using the same information to verify your identity over the phone, meaning that anyone with that same information could still impersonate you.
The problem, as often pointed out, is that much of this information is much more akin to a username than a password, but is often used as the latter. I mean, someone with my drivers license has my name, address and date of birth, which is often enough to verify with most systems that don't keep SSNs.
From a technical perspective, modern cryptography would seem to give us some opportunity here. The downside here is that its usage becomes absolute -- you either have the key or you don't, regardless of the reality of your identity. The reality is that identity is a very hard problem, with many confounding issues.
Re: Reported difficulties getting help on Equifax's phone lines
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
What stops the hackers to do this first and give their own telephone number? They have all your details.
The credit agencies already attempt to verify you when you request a credit report ("did you ever live on Main Street", etc.) or put a credit freeze on so it's not a new problem for them.
But this leak presumably leaked all of that information as well.
The problem is using not-secret information as an authenticator.
Re: Reported difficulties getting help on Equifax's phone lines
#70https://democracy.io
Email your congressperson and complain. This works. It takes time and it takes a critical mass of complaints. Tweet your Congresspeople too.