Equifax Owes 4 Million People Up to $280 for Botched Credit Scores. Here Is How to Check If You Qualify

If you applied for a mortgage, auto loan, or credit card in the spring of 2022, Equifax may owe you money. A coding error on its systems sent lenders the wrong credit scores for about 4 million people, and the company has now agreed to a 100 million dollar settlement to make it right. Claims are open, and the window closes on December 28, 2026.

Here is what happened, who qualifies, how much you could get, and how to file without falling for a scam.

What actually happened

Between March 17 and April 8, 2022, a coding error inside Equifax, referred to in court as the OMS Issue, caused the bureau to calculate some credit scores incorrectly and send those wrong numbers to lenders. The error lasted about three weeks, but your credit score helps decide whether you get approved and what interest rate you pay, so even a short glitch could have cost people real money in higher rates or denied applications.

A class action followed, and in August 2026 a federal judge gave preliminary approval to a 100 million dollar settlement. Lawyers in the case call it the largest settlement ever reached under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Equifax has not admitted any wrongdoing as part of the deal.

Who qualifies

The settlement covers people in the United States whose Equifax credit score or credit attribute was reported to a lender or other third party and came out different because of the coding error, based on Equifax's own internal analysis. In plain terms, if you were applying for credit during that three week window in 2022 and Equifax pulled your score, you may be in the class.

One thing that surprises people: you can still qualify even if your score went up during that window. Membership in the class is about your score being reported inaccurately, not about whether the error hurt you.

How much you could get

Payments are estimated at 95 to 280 dollars per person, paid in cash from the 100 million dollar fund. The exact amount depends on how many people file and how badly each person was affected. It is not life changing money, but it is real money for an error that was not your fault, and filing takes only a few minutes.

How to file your claim

The only official place to file is EquifaxFairCreditReportingSettlement.com. If you were affected, Equifax should have mailed you a notice with a Claim ID and PIN, and you need those to file online. If you believe you qualify but never received a notice, the settlement administrator can be reached at 1-888-808-1542. The deadline to file is December 28, 2026. If you do nothing, you get no payment and you give up your right to sue Equifax over the error later.

Watch out for scam sites

Big settlements attract copycats. Several websites are running fake eligibility checkers to harvest your personal information, and the real claim form never asks for payment. Stick to the official address above and ignore any site that asks for a fee or for sensitive details like your full Social Security number up front. It also helps to know there are several Equifax settlements floating around with similar names, so make sure you are filing for the 2022 credit score coding error and not a different, already closed case.

The bigger lesson

This whole mess is a reminder that the bureaus get it wrong, sometimes for millions of people at once, and the damage lands on you until someone catches it. Checking your credit reports regularly is the only way to spot an error before it costs you an approval or a better rate.

That is exactly what we do at Guard My Credit. We help you monitor your reports, catch mistakes early, and fix what is dragging your score down. File your Equifax claim before December 28, then book a free consultation and let us make sure nothing else on your report is quietly working against you.