Verizon, 2 Credit Reporting Agencies Targeted in FCRA Complaint

Inaccurate and misleading information provided by Verizon Wireless led to erroneous debt collection actions, alleged a complaint (docket 7:22-cv-10938) filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for Southern New York in White Plains against Equifax, TransUnion and Verizon for violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).

Plaintiff Israel Mertz, of Orange County, New York, had a Verizon account set up on autopay when the company was unable to process a payment in October 2021, said the complaint. In December, the plaintiff provided a new form of payment to the carrier by phone and was told by a Verizon representative the company would process the payment and the account would return to a “current” status, it said.

Verizon failed to process Mertz’s payment and sent his account out for collections instead, the complaint said. Verizon’s debt collector contacted Mertz the following March to pay the Verizon debt, and Mertz again provided his payment information over the phone, this time to the debt collector, including extra charges associated with the collection fees, the complaint said.

Though the plaintiff had satisfied the outstanding debt with Verizon, the company began reporting a collections account on his credit report and referred Mertz to the credit reporting agencies for resolution when he tried to resolve the issue, said the complaint. “Verizon continues to report a collections account on Plaintiff’s credit report, despite the fact that Plaintiff’s lateness was due to Verizon Wireless’s failure to process Plaintiff’s payment,” said the complaint.

Verizon’s “false and inaccurate adverse information,” which the plaintiff said was the only derogatory information on his credit report, led to the denial of new lines of credit, alleged the complaint, which cited a negative response to an application from a mortgage broker, “due in part to the Verizon account being reported by Transunion and Equifax.”

The credit bureaus failed to delete inaccurate information from the plaintiff’s credit file after receiving notice of the inaccuracies and failed to maintain reasonable procedures for verifying the disputed information in the plaintiff’s file, said the complaint.

Mertz is seeking judgment in his favor against the bureaus and Verizon for damages, plus reasonable costs and attorneys’ fees. Verizon, Equifax and TransUnion didn’t comment Friday.

Verizon, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion were named in a mid-December FCRA (see 2212140004) complaint by a Washington state resident, who alleged the wireless carrier conspired with the credit reporting agencies by failing for years to “fully and properly investigate” a fraudulent account attributed to him. The complaint said Verizon is barred under the FCRA from furnishing the agencies with information a consumer reports as being inaccurate or fraudulent.