There is a necessary class action law suit that needs to be filed against Experian, the multinational data analytics and consumer credit reporting company. Its scam, and it is a scam, is diabolically simple: once you enroll in its lowest level paid subscription (just $3.99 a month!), it is virtually impossible to cancel it. I say “virtually” because I would not be surprised if there was some magic, hidden,absurdly complicated way to cancel that one can only access by luck, genius or accident. Thus Experian could argue, “Oh no! It’s easy to cancel: see?”
Experian isn’t the only company to play this profitable, unethical game; since my wife’s death, I have spent an astounding number of hours dealing with dozens of companies’ “customer service” (Ha!) systems that have to have been set up to foil genuine customer service, frustrate efforts by consumers to get out of traps, and to prompt the understandable reaction, “Oh, to hell with it, it’s only a few bucks and I don’t have time for this.”
It’s a close call, but Experian is the worst of these, the most unethical and frustrating that I have encountered. Like most companies now, it pushes you to deal with it through its website, but its website contains no option to cancel the service. Even under “Your Membership,” this option doesn’t appear. There is also no phone number for Experian customer service easily accessible or initially visible on the website…it is buried screens and screens deep. There is no excuse for that: a phone number for customer service should be prominent on the home page of any ethical consumer company’s website. The only reason one would not be is because the company wants to make it as difficult to get service as it can.
To be fair, none of the phone numbers I found, including another two online, for Experian “customer service” will facilitate cancelling that monthly charge. I eventually found four numbers, one of which was sent to me by Experian’s headquarters in the U.K. after I threatened to sue them (and to write this post). The first three phone numbers reached automated systems that would not allow me to reach an agent, did not have a membership cancellation option in their automated phone trees, and on two of the three, disconnected when I continued to ask to speak to an agent or said that I wanted to cancel my subscription.
I reached a human being only once, after nearly three hours, by selecting the “report a fraud” option. When the live agent who answered told me that I had reached the wrong department, I said that I had been futilely trying to reach someone who could cancel my subscription, and asked if he could please transfer me to the correct department. He hung up. (Live agents with many companies hang up a lot when you try to get customer service.)
The extra-special, super-secret number that Experian headquarters sent me, which did not appear in any of the Google searches I tried, was the worst of all. I thought I had hit metaphorical pay dirt when I told the automated system, “I want to cancel my subscription” and heard “I can help you with that!” My heart soared like a hawk! Then I heard, “For English,” push “one.” I pushed it. Then the voice again said, “How can I help you?” Again I said, “I want to cancel my subscription” and again heard “I can help you with that!” It was an endless loop. After eight times pushing the “English” button, I hung up and tried again. Same result.
They want you to keel over with a heart attack in fury and frustration.
Multiply the $3.99 every month by—I have no idea: hundreds of thousands of suckers like me?—and the total is not inconsequential. This would be one of those class action law suits that gets the legal profession a lot of criticism: the lawyer winning it would receive at least 30% of the millions in damages (which should include large punitive damages) and the plaintiffs, like me, would get about four bucks if no punitive damages were awarded. I don’t care: Experian, and every other company that treats its customers like this, needs to be exposed, fined, and punished.
If there is an enterprising trial lawyer out there who needs a lead plaintiff to start the process, here I am. If I don’t hear from anyone, I have two good candidates of my own.
Ethics Alarms 
If you pay by CC, can’t you just cancel it through them?
PWS
You can dispute the charge, but it doesn’t cancel the subscription. Try that and they’ll just keep billing you for the service and then send you to collections.
I told my bank not to pay the automatic deduction. (You can reach a human being almost immediately at your bank.) But I should not have to do that, and it does make me nervous stiffing a credit reporting company even when it deserves it.
I’ve always despised the credit bureaus. Up until a few years ago I would always get my annual free credit report and I had to navigate very carefully to get that free credit report. They usually had a link with the smallest font known to mankind that said, “no, I just want my free credit report”. All the other options had big font in GREEN letters to entice you – like, “Yes, I want my free credit score.” You don’t get a free credit score – you are signing up for something. They never go me – perhaps because I was a senior software engineer but mainly because I trust no website and never, never, never do negative option billing. I’ll do without whatever service they have if the only option is negative option billing.
Even one of my co-workers and I were talking one morning (about 15 years ago now) and he said, “I got my free credit score.” I said, “It wasn’t free”. Him: “Yes it was, I didn’t enter any credit card information.” Me: “They already have that info”. Well, one month later he came up to me and said, “Ed, you were right that credit score wasn’t free; I saw the charge on my card yesterday.” I didn’t say anything except maybe: “Yeah, there scumbags.”
Then there is this but I don’t know the status as it is dated 3/23/2023
Federal Trade Commission Proposes Rule Provision Making it Easier for Consumers to “Click to Cancel” Recurring Subscriptions and Memberships Proposal seeks to make it as easy to cancel enrollment as it was to sign up
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/03/federal-trade-commission-proposes-rule-provision-making-it-easier-consumers-click-cancel-recurring
I don’t worry about the credit bureaus any more as I don’t need credit and I’ve frozen all my credit reports. That’s free (to lock your credit report) but to unlock them you have to pay and have the code they gave you when you locked.
Clark Howard has these suggestions with phone numbers on his site. I hope the number for Experian helps. Something needs to be done to bring these creditors etc. in line. He deals a lot with these credit reporting agencies. I would also suggest requesting to talk with him directly,
https://clark.com/credit/talk-to-real-person-experian-transunion-equifax/
https://clark.com/save-money/subscriptions-you-can-cancel/#Credit-Monitoring
That’s the FIFTH different phone number I’ve been given for Experian customer service. I’ll try it and report back.
First update: that one, unlike the others, says that it only works during “business hours.” So I’ll try tomorrow. #2, by the way, is supposedly for business members only. So this will be another “wrong department” situation.
There is also this site (link below) but it may just be redundant. I used this site a few times to get instruction on how to get to a human. They do say the numbers the list for experian are not 24 hours but business hours only.
Q:Does Experian offer 24 hour customer service?
A:Not at this number; hours here are Mon-Fri 8am-5pm PST. The least busy day is Wednesday, and the most busy day is Monday.
https://gethuman.com/phone-number/Experian
The numbers I called yesterday mentioned nothing about business hours. And I did reach a human being—who hung up on me.
Update—your trail worked as far as getting me to a real person. Then, when I said what I wanted to do, she said she would direct me to “someone who will help me” and I listened to Muzak for20 minutes until I gave up and hung up. Which I’m sure was the plan.
I’ll try again eventually.
I had a similar frustration when dealing with my wife’s death. I solved it by turning to my bank and canceling all such automated payments. What surprised me was that on a few few companies notified me that payments were missing and the few that did contacted via a live person who I could deal with.
I have a currently ongoing experience with a storage company. This is actually fairly involved, so feel free to skip to the end.
When I left Texas 22 years ago I rented a storage unit and put a bunch of stuff (mostly books) in it. I think it was something like $69 per month back then and, as of about a year or so ago, had gone up to $84. I set up billpay with my bank to make these payments.
So the storage company evidently got bought out and is under new management. I opened a bill from them late last spring or early summer and discovered that they had been dinging me for hundreds of dollars in late fees. Apparently they’d processed my payment late one month, or it was delivered late by the post office, or something. They charged a late fee. That in turn mean that their automated billing system saw my next payment as insufficient so they charged another late fee and it quickly spiraled out of control (their late fees are charged something like weekly).
I called the company and got them to acknowledge that I really hadn’t been late and to cancel all the fees. However, they also told me that a)I needed to sign up for credit card billing, b) They needed to get into the unit to check to bugs or something and to be able to fumigate it or something. Since I have no idea where my key might be, I authorized them to cut the lock and put a new one on. They sent me a link to put in my credit card information, which I did.
Since last summer the price for the unit has gone up several times — it was $84, then $103, then I think $119, and finally they sent me a notice that it was going up to $139.
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That was the last straw. I sent them an email saying that that was too much and I did not accept this latest price increase. Furthermore I was instructing my credit card company not to accept any more charges. They actually responded to that by saying that their price was competitive for their town and would I like to stop by the office to discuss it.
Right, I don’t think I’m making a 1500 mile drive for that. So naturally the next month they charged my credit card. I reached out the the credit card company and explained the situation. They reversed the charge, and asked that I email the storage company explaining that I was cancelling the service and not to charge me again. I did that.
As an aside, the company is not normally much at risk of loss. If someone doesn’t pay, they can open the unit and sell the contents, which included a king size bed and large refrigerator, as well as 40 cartons of books and other stuff I’ve forgotten.
So the next month, they charge my card again. This time I reported it as a fraudulent charge, and the credit card company cancelled my card and issued a new one. There were a couple other monthly debits to that card I had to change. Nothing heard from the company at this time or the month before — they never responded to my email.
Well the following month, which was May, the credit card was declined, and they finally noticed that they didn’t get paid — I don’t know that they yet know they weren’t paid for the prior two months.
So now I get an email from them just about every business day, to let me know that I am at risk of being auctioned. They also have called our landline (which we no longer answer) and left messages.
I would feel bad about this except that they chose to ignore the message I sent them and never noticed that their credit card charges were getting reversed (I know that the credit card company would send them messages about that), and that they haven’t actually been paid since February 1.
Oh, and of course what precipitated this was nearly doubling their monthly charge during the course of about 9 months. Had they been content to only raise their rates by 50% I might still be paying them. Had they answered my emails this would have been resolved already.
So I feel this is a case of a)Corporate greed by the new owners and b)Automated systems where what employees they have aren’t involved in the operations of the company.
They got my money for 20 years — now they can have my books.
This website has a walkthrough with pictures. It looks like you have to pick the free option to get out of it.
https://cushion.ai/blog/cancel-experian-membership/
You might only be able to change from paid to a free membership, not actually cancel.
https://www.experian.com/help/how-to-cancel-experian-membership.html