Equifax Agreed to a $30 Million Settlement for About 3 Million People Who Disputed a Hard Inquiry — Class Counsel Estimate About $100 to $400 Each, for Those in Equifax's Records Who Claim by November 29, 2026. It Is Not the $100 Million Equifax Settlement.

This is the Equifax settlement for people who disputed a hard inquiry — the notation that appears on your Equifax file when a company pulls your credit report — and got nowhere. The four lawsuits it resolves allege that after consumers told Equifax their reports had been obtained without a permissible purpose, Equifax “did not contact the companies that requested the credit reports, nor did it remove the notations” they disputed, and mailed some of them a letter stating, in part: “Inquiries are a factual record of file access. If you believe this was unauthorized, please contact the creditor.” The claims were brought under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act and New York and New Jersey credit-reporting laws. Equifax “has denied and continues to deny” the allegations, and no court has decided who is right.

You cannot sign yourself up by remembering a dispute. The class was built from Equifax's own records — the official site says “If you received notice, according to Equifax's records, you are a member of the Settlement Class” — and the court ordered the administrator to send notice, by email where it has an address and otherwise by first-class mail, by September 30, 2026. According to Equifax's records there are about 3 million class members; about 1 million of them are in the higher-paying Certified Group and about 35,000 in the New York Subclass. If you believe you belong but received nothing, the claim page tells you to contact the administrator (details below).

As of September 30, 2026, the claim form is open. The claim deadline is November 29, 2026. Nobody is paid until the court grants final approval after the December 10, 2026 hearing and any appeals are over.

The settlement has three tiers, and you can look up yours by logging in with the Claim Number and PIN from your notice. The definitions, from the settlement agreement and the official site:

• Certified Group (about $300): Equifax received a mailed letter from you disputing one or more hard inquiries between October 4, 2016 and March 27, 2026; Equifax coded the dispute “not mine” (001) or “unauthorized” (383); and Equifax sent you a document containing its response code “Cons Comm 664” — the “inquiries are a factual record of file access” letter.
• New York Subclass (about $400): people with a New York address who got that letter in response to a mailed dispute coded 001 or 383 between November 27, 2017 and September 10, 2024. They have an extra claim under New York's credit-reporting law, and some of them already received a notice about the Hines case in August or November 2025.
• General Dispute Group (about $100): everyone else for whom Equifax's records show one or more disputes of a hard inquiry between August 31, 2021 and March 27, 2026. Unlike the Certified Group, this part of the definition does not require a mailed letter, a particular dispute code or a particular response.

The dollar figures are estimates, not promises. Under the distribution plan every valid claim earns points — 3 for the Certified Group, 4 for Certified Group members who are also in the New York Subclass, 1 for everyone else — and what is left of the fund is divided by the total points claimed. The motion for preliminary approval ties the estimates to those points: one point, about $100. The notice adds that the estimates are “based upon the typical claims rates in similar cases – the actual payment amounts will depend on the actual claims rates in this case and may be lower or higher.”

By our arithmetic, that assumes low turnout. Out of the $30 million, class counsel will ask for up to $10 million in fees, up to $260,000 in expenses and up to $60,000 in service awards for the four named plaintiffs. That leaves at most $19.68 million before administration costs, which the published papers do not put a number on. If all 3 million class members claimed, there would be about 5,035,000 points and a point would be worth under $4. A $100 point works only if no more than about 196,800 points are claimed — roughly 3.9 percent of the points available — on the order of one eligible person in 25 filing, if turnout is similar across the groups. More claims mean smaller payments for everyone; fewer claims, larger ones.

Online: go to EquifaxDisputeClassAction.com, choose “File A Claim” and log in with the Claim Number and PIN, which “must be entered exactly as they appear on your Mailed or Email Notice.” By mail: the paper claim form goes to Hines v. Equifax, c/o Settlement Administrator, P.O. Box 16, West Point, PA 19486; the form also lists questions@equifaxdisputeclassaction.com as a way to send it in. Either way, the deadline is November 29, 2026.

The form is short, but it is not a formality. You must complete every part, check at least one box and sign: “I certify subject to the penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct.” The two boxes follow the statement that you disputed an inquiry on your Equifax credit report: “I suffered an economic loss, a loss of privacy, or other negative consequences based on Equifax's handling of my dispute,” and “I was denied credit, and one reason for the denial was the existence on my Equifax credit report of an inquiry that I disputed with Equifax.” A form without a checked box and a signature “will not receive payment.” The paper form asks for no documents or receipts and has no field for a Social Security number.

No notice? The claim page says: “If you have not received a Mailed or Email Notice with a pre-assigned Claim Number but believe that you are a Settlement Class Member of this Lawsuit, please contact us.” That means the administrator at (833) 244-4150 or questions@EquifaxDisputeClassAction.com. Every group is defined by what Equifax's records reflect, and the agreement makes those records “the sole source of the information” for the payment formula — a dispute that is not in Equifax's records does not qualify, however clearly you remember sending it.

The other dates: to opt out and keep the right to sue Equifax on your own, or to object, write by November 20, 2026; a Notice of Intention to Appear at the hearing must arrive by November 26, 2026. Class counsel's fee request is due by October 20, 2026 and will be posted on the settlement site, and the motion for final approval by November 30, 2026. If you do nothing, you get no money and still give up claims “related to the inquiry they disputed and/or challenged with Equifax.”

There is no payment date, and there cannot be one yet. The court's order sets the final fairness hearing for December 10, 2026 at 10:00 a.m. before Magistrate Judge Marutollo “via Zoom”; the settlement site lists the Brooklyn courthouse at 225 Cadman Plaza East and says the hearing “may be virtual or moved to a different date or time without additional notice.” Under the settlement agreement, Equifax pays $1.5 million within seven days of preliminary approval to cover notice and administration; the remaining $28.5 million is due within 10 days after the “Effective Date,” which is seven days after the time to appeal the final approval order runs out — or, if someone appeals, seven days after the approval is affirmed. Payments to claimants go out within 14 days of the Effective Date. By our reading, even a smooth approval on December 10 puts the first payments in 2027.

Payment comes as a paper check unless you choose one of the electronic options on the website. Checks are void if not cashed within 60 days of mailing, although the administrator may reissue them. If enough is left afterward to send at least $10 more to everyone who cashed, there is a second distribution; otherwise the remainder goes to non-profits working on consumer credit education, counseling, advocacy or financial literacy — half chosen by class counsel, half by Equifax. None of it goes back to the company: “There shall be no reversion of any portion of the Settlement Fund to Defendant.”

(The same August 5 order also tells the clerk to administratively close the case file — which is why docket trackers show the case as terminated. The order says this applies “notwithstanding” the schedule above, which still stands.)

The notice comes from the settlement administrator, not from Equifax. The settlement agreement names Continental DataLogix, LLC as administrator; the official site is EquifaxDisputeClassAction.com, the toll-free number (833) 244-4150, the mailing address P.O. Box 16, West Point, PA 19486. The notice itself says: “Please do not contact Equifax or the Court for information.” A genuine notice carries a Claim Number and a PIN, and the online form starts by asking for exactly those two things.

Filing costs nothing, and you do not need to hire a lawyer: class counsel “have handled this case on a contingency basis,” and any fees the court approves come out of the fund, not from class members. Because the paper form asks for no documents and no Social Security number, a message that demands a fee, a Social Security number or a bank log-in to “release” an Equifax payment deserves suspicion. Type the address into your browser yourself instead of clicking a link, or call the number above.

At least four different cases answer to the name “Equifax settlement.” The claim credentials are not interchangeable, and only two are open.

• This one — hard-inquiry disputes, $30 million: Hines v. Equifax (E.D.N.Y.), EquifaxDisputeClassAction.com, claim deadline November 29, 2026.
• The $100 million credit-score error settlement: In re Equifax Fair Credit Reporting Act Litigation, No. 1:22-cv-3072 (N.D. Ga.), for people whose information Equifax reported to a third party between March 17 and April 8, 2022 that was affected by a coding issue. Claim deadline December 28, 2026, final approval hearing January 22, 2027, at EquifaxFairCreditReportingSettlement.com. Our page on that case.
• The duplicate-collection-account settlement (Bradberry v. Equifax): its claim, opt-out and objection deadline was September 1, 2026 and has passed; the final approval hearing is October 6, 2026. Our page on that case.
• The 2017 data breach settlement: the last claim deadline passed on January 22, 2024.

The cases cover different conduct, and each release is tied to its own facts — this one to claims “relating to hard inquiry disputes,” the $100 million one to “all claims against Equifax relating to the coding issue.” Nothing in the papers we read makes someone ineligible for one because they are in another; each has its own notice, its own Claim Number and PIN and its own deadline. The hard-inquiry problem is not unique to Equifax, either: TransUnion settled a similar case over its answers to hard-inquiry disputes, Norman v. Trans Union, whose claim deadline passed in June 2025 (our page).

The oldest of the four cases, Rivera, was filed in the Northern District of Georgia on October 4, 2018. Its class reached back two years before filing — which is where the Certified Group's October 4, 2016 start comes from — and the court certified it nationwide on March 30, 2022; the Eleventh Circuit turned down Equifax's petition to appeal that ruling on June 14, 2022. Hines followed in Brooklyn on November 27, 2019; on September 10, 2024 the court there certified a New York class and a Capital One-specific class. The New York Subclass runs from two years before the Hines filing, November 27, 2017, to that certification date. Neubauer and Oblack came later and never reached a class certification motion.

In January 2026 the two sides reached an agreement in principle, according to Equifax's quarterly report, which says the company accrued $30.0 million for these matters in the fourth quarter of 2025. The signed settlement was filed on March 27, 2026 — the date the class period ends — and Judge Marutollo granted preliminary approval on August 5, 2026. The next public filings are the fee request by October 20 and the motion for final approval by November 30 — the first chance for a public count of claims, and with it the real value of a point.