Complaint Rating:

Company information:
Experian
California
United States
freecreditreport.com

My name is Danielle Hawley. Account number was 78252690 before I canceled it today. I had recently noticed a charge on my Discover card bill that was for $12. It had a phone number attached to it so I called the number and found out what the charge was for. I spoke to a representative named Brady, agent no. 4715. She informed me that back in January I had gotten a free credit report and failed to cancel the membership. While I don't remember ever doing this, I simply asked her if I may be reimbursed for the Month of December as I was just charged less then one week ago for it but didn't realize it until today because I just got the bill. She told me that she could not reimburse me because I didn't cancel before that day. I thought this to be a bit ridiculous, especially considering that I've been paying for a service for almost a year now that I didn't know about and have never used. When I asked to speak with a manager or supervisor she told me that she was not "allowed" to transfer me because I called a customer care line. I informed her that the customer care line was the only number that was given to me and asked if she could give me another number to call where I could speak to someone with higher authority than herself and she then told me she was not allowed to provide me with any other number as well.

So far, this company is seemingly shifty at this point, what big company with "over 2 million consumers" as advertised on the web site runs their company in such a way? Doesn't seem like a credible company to me. I then ask her if there's an address that I can write to and she tells me no. Of course at this point I was irate because I've never heard of a business that doesn't have a way for customers to talk to someone with higher authority than a customer care rep and also doesn't have a physical address to write to. After she told me that I couldn't write to an address, I then asked about an email address that I could write to. She told me that she wasn't sure, she thought there was one but didn't know if it was for the purpose of providing feedback or not, but she would not give me the email, she told me that I had to go online to get it. So I wrote down the freecreditreport.com web site and also the sister company's web site, consumerinfo.com. She then asked if there was anything else she could do for me (aside from canceling my account) and I said no so she said thank you and told me to have a nice day, which of course is a joke when you've just found out that you've been wasting money and Christmas is right around the corner and this huge company can't be reasonable enough to reimburse you for a charge that was made less than one week ago.

When I hung up with her I was furious. I waited a few minutes and called the customer care number again. This time I spoke to a much more pleasant and cooperative rep by the name of Wendy, agent no. 4288. I simply asked her where this company was headquartered and if I may have the address. She politely told me that the information I requested was private and that she couldn't give it to me. I then asked her how someone could provide feedback if there was no address to write to and proceeded to ask if there was an email address. She said yes there was an email and asked me to hold while she pulled it up. She then gave this email to me. I thanked her for her help.

Obviously, I get off the phone, astonished that this young lady knew this email address and gave it to me, without even asking for my account information, yet the other rep refused to help me at all. I knew that there had to be a physical address that I could write to so I got online and went to the freecreditreport.com site. In the bottom left hand corner it clearly says, "contact us" so I click on it and poof! Email address AND a physical address, it was a PO box, but I'll take it! I find it simply amazing that I had to go through all of that just to get a mailing address that one representative told me she didn't know and couldn't release and another representative told me is private, yet is publicly available on the web site.

This has been the most ridiculous situation I've ever dealt with. It is totally unethical, if this happens to you, call your credit card company and notify them of the "unauthorized charge" to your card, they can usually do a charge back within 60 or 90 days of the carge appearing on the card.