Credit agencies Equifax and TransUnion | Your four problems (and how to fix them)

A few weeks ago, we discussed various ways to protect your credit after the end of Equifax protection linked to the data leak at Desjardins. Many of you wrote to us to tell us about problems you were having with the credit reporting agencies Equifax and TransUnion. Here are the top four – and how to fix them.

1. Difficult to find the free version of TransUnion

Quebecers must be able to consult and lock their credit file for free.

There Credit Reporting Agents Actadopted in 2020, states this clearly… but access to these services can be difficult.

Read our report “Data theft at Desjardins: after Equifax, how to protect your data? »

Managing to connect to your account on TransUnion for free to lock it – or simply consult it – seems to be the most confusing process. If you go directly to the credit agency’s website, the yellow clickable buttons on the home page, which carry words like “Get your credit report”, lead to a paid service. You must find a hyperlink more discreetly slipped into a text, under the “Customer assistance” section, to access the free version.

André Laurendeau decided to lock his credit file after reading our report. On the Equifax site, everything went well, he entered his personal information and had access to his file. But when he tried to do the same on the TransUnion site, he was asked for his credit card number. “Strange,” I said to myself. But since it is a credit bureau, and they must already have this information, I believed in an additional check of my identity,” he relates.

Shortly after, he received an email confirming a $28 transaction on his credit card.

The irony is that this version of the service did not take him to the interface where it is possible to lock his credit file.

He is not the only one to have encountered this problem. Several readers sent us similar messages. “For locking the credit file with TransUnion, it is very complicated and not at all user-friendly. They want us to pay for a monitoring subscription. I managed to lock it only after several searches, trials, errors,” Joëlle Saint-Pierre wrote to us, for example.

We reached out to TransUnion to see if they planned to further highlight the free version of their service. The agency simply sent us the link, with a terse response. “We are continually trying to improve our user experience, and security is a priority for TransUnion,” reads the email written in English only.

2. Activate a security alert, yes, but how?

The law also provides that consumers can activate a security alert mechanism free of charge, ensuring that when attempting to open a line of credit, the issuer contacts them by telephone to confirm their identity. . Such an alert remains active for six years.

Several readers wrote to us to say that it wasn’t easy to figure out how to activate it – probably because it has a different name in the two agencies.

3. Missing information for calculating odds

Our rating is calculated from several elements. Among these, our payment history on credit lines, our credit rate used in relation to available credit or even public data, such as the declaration of bankruptcy.

The calculation method is not exactly the same at Equifax and TransUnion, so the rating may vary from location to location.

But there are also other reasons. A reader told us that he checked his credit score when he was in the process of purchasing a new car. He was startled to see that at Equifax it was 840, which is excellent, but that at TransUnion it was only 706, considerably lower.

“When I read the rest of my file, I understood why they gave me this rating: it is missing [à TransUnion] at least 90% of the information Equifax uses to establish its rating! », Underlines the man, who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals.

According to his observations, his TransUnion account, for example, only lists one car loan out of the two he had, and does not list his credit card or his cell phone account.

“How can you assign a credit score without having all the necessary information? », he raises, deploring that TransUnion allows information to be contested, if it is inaccurate, but not to add to it.

This reader recently moved into a new apartment in Saint-Jérôme. “The landlord did a credit check on me before agreeing to rent the accommodation to me. Fortunately, he did it with Equifax. If he had done it with TransUnion, I would never have had the accommodation,” he believes.

According to information received from credit agencies, his situation is not surprising. These pass the buck to financial institutions and lenders.

“It is important to note that some creditors report their accounts to both national credit bureaus, to only one of them, or to none of them,” Equifax wrote to The Press.

“TransUnion does not add any account to a person’s file unless it comes from the creditor, to ensure that the creditor will update the information regularly. If a consumer has a credit account that they do not see in their credit report, they should contact their creditor to determine if they can report the information to TransUnion,” the American company said. .

In these circumstances, can we say that this is a good way to assess someone’s credit?

The Financial Markets Authority (AMF) responded to The Press that it was not in the agencies’ interest to reject information, since this file constitutes the product it provides to financial institutions and interested stakeholders.

“To offer them the best possible service, namely the transmission of credit files with the most complete and accurate information, it is not in the agencies’ interest to reject information. However, credit agencies are dependent on the information transmitted to them, which may be incorrect or incomplete, which is why there may be errors in credit files,” maintains the AMF, which then suggests to contact the credit agency or financial institution to correct the information.

4. Poorly protected data

One of the basic recommendations when maintaining an account is to activate a double authentication process. You know that mechanism where in addition to entering your password, you have to add a code that you receive by text message or in your email box?

Neither Equifax nor TransUnion allows users to activate such a mechanism. “It angers me that Equifax doesn’t offer more options to secure access to our account. Should credit agencies be required to add two-factor authentication to their platforms? », Raises a reader, who wishes to remain anonymous.

This was the first recommendation from cybersecurity expert Eric Parent when we asked him how to properly protect his data.

“If an account is really important, you shouldn’t protect it just with a password. The authentication application is even better than the code via text messaging, but in any case, it’s good,” he emphasizes.

During our use of both platforms, TransUnion occasionally asked us to confirm our identity with a code sent by email, but this was not systematic.