Equifax needs to explain what the monitoring does. I have it free already from my credit card company, what is being offered that’s better?
The Capital One breach case has got weirder and scarier.
I filed about 3 days ago, but it looks like those of us who opted for $125 won’t be getting it after all.
How do promise people a flat $125, and then tell them they won’t be getting that money because too many people asked for it?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7310975/Millions-people-caught-Equifax-breach-WONT-promised-125-payment.html
The math didn’t make much sense to me anyway. It wouldn’t take many of the 147 million affected to claim $125 before the $700 million ran out. Now we’re told there’s only $31 million in the cash pot. I guess the balance of the $700 million was in their perceived value of their credit monitoring services? (Where’s the eye roll emoji?)
Here’s the problem: a credit monitoring service is basically a system where you are giving permission to an agency to access and store all your information, with the understanding they will notify you in the event of any change or problem. Given that these agencies already have most of your info, there’s not much harm in signing up – but if there is value to be derived from a credit monitoring system, the weight of the benefit goes to the agency doing the monitoring. And if that is the same damn agency that has already leaked your data because of its inadequate security … well you can’t use the fees they choose to charge for the monitoring service when not offered for free as any indication of value.
In other words, what they offered to all impacted consumers was $125 or zilch. And now they are surprised that most of the consumers were smart enough to figure out that $125 is worth more than zilch? It could have been $50 or $25 and they probably would have seen the same results. Cash in hand of any kind is worth more than the monitoring service. Especially given the fact that so many banks, & credit cards are already offering some level of free monitoring to their customers. It’s not as if anyone really needs the service they are offering.
I’m guessing that they were hoping they could channel enough people into the “free” monitoring so that 4 years down the line, they’d have a really great base of customers to target for paid subscriptions. And obviously it didn’t work.
I read that if more than ~250k people applied for the $125, the fund would run out. So far more than a million have applied, so divide that $125 by 4. It’s only the first week so divide that by about 4.
I think we’ll be getting about $10. I don’t know how they thought only 250k would apply when there were 147 MILLION who could file.
That’s what I think @calmom. We - and our government - got played.
A poster on this thread was kind enough to answer my question regarding paying taxes online after freezing your credit, however after reading conflicting answers on various websites I decided to call the IRS to confirm.
After being on hold for over an hour I finally spoke to a representative. She could not answer my question and placed me on hold for several more minutes. It turns out that when you pay your taxes online ( we do this several times a year) you need to unfreeze your credit… or it will not work. You can’t pay taxes online while your credit is frozen.
I’ve paid taxes online multiple times. Both my Credit and H’s are frozen. Never lifted it to pay and have never had issues. Pay both state and fed taxes. Also pre-pay estimated taxes, property taxes and everything else.
Wow that’s so weird! Hmmm…good to know.
Are you paying your taxes with a credit card? If so, maybe they are doing a hard pull to make sure it’s really you.
I always pay online via direct withdrawal from my checking account, there shouldn’t be anything involving credit using that method. The money is either there or not.
We don’t pay by credit card. We pay via direct withdrawal from checking. It makes sense that freezing your credit would not matter…yet they told me it does. Maybe they didn’t understand my question…
Doesn’t make sense to me to provide my social security number to an entity that couldn’t keep a secret in return for $10. Even at $125 I wasn’t buying. I learned my lesson a long time ago when I was the recipient of maybe $150 in Northwest airlines coupons, the result of a class action suit. You could only spend $25 per plane ticket (could not bundle them for one ticket) and they expired in a year. Class action suits are great - for the lawyers collecting fees. They should be paid in monitoring services or maybe accept a sliding fee of $10 - $125 for each victim who comes forward. Realize this isn’t a class action suit but they sure have copied the format - consumer is always the loser.
We have paid and pre-paid taxes with both CC and by electronic check. Never have had any problems while our credit is frozen. I’m not sure if the person helping you may have been confused or misreading something. This has been years now, ever since our new CPA says the IRS wants everyone to write their entire SSN on their checks to IRS! I refuse and have been paying electronically since.
The IRS is just like any other creditor. You can pay them online even if your credit is frozen. You couldn’t OPEN a new account or apply for credit while it is frozen but you can pay any bills. The only rule we ran into with them is that the payment has to come from an account connected to the SSN. That may be different with a business, but for my daughter, the money had to come from her account not mine.
I think that is very optimistic. More likely, $31 million divided by 50 million or 100 million people will reduce individual cash awards to less than one dollar per person. In other words, pennies.
We haven’t had any trouble efiling and paying taxes with credit frozen. Not federal and 2 different states.
The settlement isn’t a done deal, yet.
I got an email today (you probably did too, check your email) about my equifax claim asking for more information, specifically:
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So now they want proof:
This simply reinforces my feeling that this entire Equifax Claim thing is a big scam, aided and abetted by the FTC, to get more customers for the credit monitoring service. I will probably do nothing, or maybe send them a nasty email. It is tough when you feel you are being scammed by your own government.
I got that email but I do already have a credit monitoring service, free through AAA, and will provide that name. If in the claim, one said they already had a service, how is it a scam to be asked to confirm (not prove) that?
I did not receive that email yet, but I’ll keep an eye out for it.
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