Disputed a Hard Inquiry With Equifax? A $30 Million Settlement Claim Is Due November 29
If Equifax answered your inquiry dispute with a form letter, you may be in a $30 million settlement. Who qualifies, what it may pay, and the deadline.
Maybe you saw a hard inquiry on your Equifax report from a company you never applied with. You mailed a dispute. What came back was a short letter that said, more or less, “inquiries are a factual record of file access,” and told you to call the creditor yourself. If that sounds familiar, there’s a $30 million settlement with your name possibly on it, and the claim deadline is November 29, 2026.
What happened
The case is Hines v. Equifax Information Services LLC, No. 1:19-cv-06701, in federal court in the Eastern District of New York. It folds in three related cases filed in Georgia, Oregon and New Jersey. The settlement agreement was filed with the court on March 27, 2026.
The lawsuits claim that when people mailed disputes saying a hard inquiry was “not mine” or “unauthorized,” Equifax often sent back a stock reply. Inside the company that reply was coded “Cons Comm 664.” According to the suit, Equifax didn’t contact the companies that pulled the reports and didn’t take the disputed inquiries off. The claims were brought under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), plus New York’s credit reporting law and a similar New Jersey law.
Equifax denies all of it. The agreement says plainly that settling is not an admission that it broke any law. Keep that in mind as you read. These are allegations, and a settlement is a business decision to stop fighting.
Who’s in it
You can’t just declare yourself a member. Membership comes from Equifax’s own records. There are three groups:
- Certified Group. Equifax received a mailed letter from you disputing a hard inquiry between October 4, 2016 and March 27, 2026. It coded the dispute “not mine” or “unauthorized.” And it sent you back the “factual record of file access” letter.
- New York Subclass. Same kind of mailed dispute and the same reply letter, sent to a New York address between November 27, 2017 and September 10, 2024.
- General Dispute Group. Equifax’s records show you disputed a hard inquiry, by any method, between August 31, 2021 and March 27, 2026.
About 3 million people are covered in all, according to the settlement website as reported by ClassAction.org and Money Talks News.
What it may pay
Nobody knows the exact amount yet. The money is split by points. Under the agreement, a Certified Group member who files gets 3 points, a Certified Group member who is also in the New York Subclass gets 4, and everyone else gets 1. Your share is your points divided by the total points of everyone who files.
The published estimates are about $300 for the Certified Group, about $400 for the New York Subclass, and about $100 for the General Dispute Group. Those are estimates, not promises. More claims means smaller checks. Results vary.
Now the arithmetic the notice doesn’t do for you. The agreement lets class lawyers ask for up to $10 million in fees, which is one third of the fund, plus up to $260,000 in expenses. The four people who brought the cases can get service awards of up to $20,000 each for two of them and $10,000 each for the other two. That’s $60,000. Take all of that out and you’re at about $19.68 million, before the administrator’s costs.
Spread $19.68 million across 3 million people and you get about $6.56 each. The only reason the estimates are $100 to $400 is that most people in a class action never file. So the people who do file are splitting money that the people who don’t file left on the table.
Two more things in the agreement are worth knowing. None of the money goes back to Equifax. If checks go uncashed and there’s enough left for at least $10 more per person, there’s a second payment to people who cashed the first one. Anything after that goes to nonprofits for consumer credit education.
What the law actually requires
This is the part that matters even if you never see a dime.
Under 15 U.S.C. § 1681i(a)(1)(A), when you dispute “any item of information” in your file, the bureau has to “conduct a reasonable reinvestigation” for free, within 30 days. An inquiry is an item of information. Under § 1681i(a)(2)(A), the bureau has 5 business days to notify the company that supplied the disputed item. If the item turns out inaccurate or “cannot be verified,” § 1681i(a)(5)(A) says the bureau must “promptly delete” it or fix it.
A letter that tells you to go call the creditor yourself puts the job back on you. The law puts it on the bureau. That gap is exactly what the lawsuits alleged.
You also have a right most people never use. Under § 1681i(a)(6)(B)(iii) and (a)(7), you can ask the bureau to describe how it checked your dispute, including the name, address and phone number of any company it contacted. It has 15 days to answer. If the answer is “we didn’t contact anybody,” you’ve learned something.
After I dug out of the 2008 mess, my second fight was wrong information that stayed on my report. So my advice is simple: when a dispute comes back “verified” with no detail, ask for that description.
Exactly what to do
- Find your notice. Notices went out by email or mail with a claim number and PIN. Search your inbox and spam for “Hines v Equifax.” You need those numbers to file.
- Type the address yourself. The official site is EquifaxDisputeClassAction.com. Don’t click a link in an email to get there. Filing is free, so anyone asking for money to file isn’t the real thing.
- File by November 29, 2026. You don’t need receipts or old reports. You do have to sign, under penalty of perjury, that you disputed an inquiry and were harmed by how Equifax handled it. Only sign it if it’s true.
- Decide by November 20, 2026 if you want out. That’s the deadline to opt out or object. Opting out keeps your right to sue on your own. If you do nothing, you get nothing and you still give up that right.
- If you think you qualify but got no notice, contact the settlement administrator through the official site.
- If a mystery inquiry is still on your report, pull your reports free at AnnualCreditReport.com and dispute it for investigation again. Then ask for that description of how they checked it.
The court’s final approval hearing is December 10, 2026. Payments come only after final approval and any appeals, so don’t expect a check this year.
What to watch out for
Mixing it up with the other one. Equifax has a separate, larger settlement over a 2022 glitch that sent lenders wrong credit scores. It has its own notices and later deadlines. You might be in both, one, or neither.
Anyone charging to “check if you qualify.” Your group is decided by Equifax’s records and shown when you log in with your claim number and PIN. That costs nothing.
Thinking the check fixes your report. It doesn’t. Money from a settlement doesn’t change a single line on your file. The dispute rights above do that work.
If you get stuck on any of this, bring it to the free CreditShield community on Skool.
This is educational information, not legal advice.
Sources
- Class Settlement Agreement and Release, Hines v. Equifax Information Services LLC, No. 1:19-cv-06701-RPK-JAM, ECF No. 103-1, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, filed 2026-03-27
- Ever Disputed a Credit Check With Equifax? You Could Be Owed up to $400, Stacy Johnson, Money Talks News, 2026-10-21
- $30M Equifax Settlement Ends Class Action Lawsuits Over Inquiry Dispute Investigations, ClassAction.org, 2026-10-01
- $30M Equifax hard inquiry dispute class action settlement, Top Class Actions, 2026-10-03
- 15 U.S. Code § 1681i, Procedure in case of disputed accuracy, Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School, accessed 2026-11-03
- What is a credit inquiry?, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, last reviewed 2025-09-05
- Eligible for a payout? Some Equifax customers could get up to $280 in $100 million settlement, WFSB, 2026-10-06
