Anyone who wants out of the Equifax credit-reporting class action, or wants to object to it, has until November 27, 2026, and the claim deadline for everyone who stays in is December 28, 2026. The settlement resolves claims that a coding problem in March and April 2022 caused Equifax to report altered credit scores to lenders. A federal judge in Atlanta will hold the final approval hearing on January 22, 2027.
Inside the guide: The Settlement & Refund Recovery System includes the four-date rule for reading a settlement notice and a claim log and payment tracker.
Open the four-date rule and claim log for the Equifax credit-reporting settlement →
Four dates in the Equifax notice
The settlement website for In re Equifax Fair Credit Reporting Act Litigation, No. 1:22-cv-3072-LMM-CCB, lists the schedule. Exclusion and objection requests are due November 27, 2026. Claims are due December 28, 2026, 31 days later. The final approval hearing is set for January 22, 2027 at 2:00 p.m. in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, at the Richard B. Russell Federal Building, 75 Ted Turner Drive SW, Atlanta.
That order matters. The date a person can leave the class or file an objection comes a month before the date a person can claim, so someone weighing the settlement cannot treat the claim deadline as the only one on the calendar. As of this week, November 27 is 53 days away and December 28 is 84.
What went wrong in 2022 and who is in the class
The site says that between March 17 and April 8, 2022, Equifax experienced a computer coding issue that affected credit reporting to third parties for certain individuals. The class is defined as everyone in the United States for whom a credit score or credit attribute that differed from what it would have been without the issue, which the settlement calls the OMS Issue, was reported by Equifax to a third party.
Membership therefore does not depend on a consumer’s own account of harm. The site ties the class to Equifax’s own analysis of who was affected.
Rough Draft Atlanta, reporting on the August 13, 2026 filing for preliminary approval, described the stakes in terms of lending: the scoring error hit people applying for auto loans, mortgages and credit cards. Clark Howard, the Channel 2 consumer advisor, told the outlet that affected consumers “could have been denied a loan, or charged a higher interest rate for that loan.”
The $100 million fund is not on the administrator’s site
The administrator’s page gives no fund total and no per-person amount, so it offers no basis for an individual figure. A Rough Draft Atlanta report puts the non-reversionary fund at $100 million, to cover payments to eligible consumers along with attorneys’ fees and the cost of notice and claims processing. Because those costs come out of the same pot, the amount that reaches claimants will be smaller than the headline fund, and the site says valid claimants are paid only if the settlement becomes final.
The site does not say whether Equifax admits liability. It states that a claim is required: “You must submit a claim to receive payment.” Staying silent, in other words, produces no check.
What January 22 can and cannot decide
The January 22 hearing is the point at which the court decides whether to give final approval. Until then, the settlement is a proposal awaiting the court’s approval. Objectors have a date to put their concerns on the record, and the hearing follows that date by eight weeks. Whether the judge approves the settlement, changes it or sends it back is not something any of the pages read for this article can predict, and none gives a payment date.
Scam sites copy settlements like this one
The FTC has a standing warning, written about the separate 2017 Equifax data breach settlement, that fake websites imitate legitimate claims pages and that “You’ll never have to pay to file a claim for these benefits.” That FTC consumer alert concerns a different settlement, but the same logic applies to any claim page that asks for a fee. The Equifax credit-reporting settlement’s own site is the only place the dates in this article should be checked.
Two clocks a month apart, and a class list a consumer cannot run alone
The hard part of this settlement is that its dates and its membership test pull in different directions. The first clock, November 27, covers leaving the class or objecting. The second, December 28, covers claiming. A consumer who wants to stay in the class and be paid has to notice that the earlier date exists even though it asks for nothing, while a consumer who intends to opt out has to act a full month before the claim window closes.
The membership test adds a second problem. The class is defined by whether Equifax’s own OMS analysis found a changed score or attribute reported to a third party between March 17 and April 8, 2022. A consumer cannot run that analysis, and the site’s front page does not say how one learns whether a record was flagged. The pages read for this article offer no way for a consumer to check that independently.
The route that does not depend on anything else runs through the administrator, Verita, and the settlement website listed above, where claims are filed and the schedule is posted. The pages read for this article describe no fee to file.
Four dates, one notice, and a claim still to file
The Equifax credit-reporting settlement puts an exclusion and objection date, a claim date and a hearing date inside two months of each other. The unfinished job for a consumer in the class is keeping those dates and the claim itself in one place until the court rules.
The Settlement & Refund Recovery System includes a step-by-step filing walkthrough for completing the form and the scam-proof rules for checking any settlement page before entering personal details.
Open The Settlement & Refund Recovery System →
This piece was drafted with AI assistance; the deadlines and hearing date were checked against the settlement administrator’s website, and the fund size against a Rough Draft Atlanta report.
