People finding success taking Equifax to small-claims court — using a chatbot

FILE - This July 21, 2012, file photo shows signage at the corporate headquarters of Equifax Inc. A handful of customers of the company who elected to sue the company in small claims court using chatbot Do Not Pay say they have won their judgements against the company. less FILE - This July 21, 2012, file photo shows signage at the corporate headquarters of Equifax Inc. A handful of customers of the company who elected to sue the company in small claims court using chatbot Do Not ... more Photo: Mike Stewart / Associated Press 2012 Photo: Mike Stewart / Associated Press 2012 Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close People finding success taking Equifax to small-claims court — using a chatbot 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

There doesn't seem to be much recourse for those who had their personal information stolen in the Equifax data breach in 2017, but some customers are using a chatbot to sue Equifax in small-claims court — and are winning close to $10,000 in certain cases.

Rather than joining a class-action to sue, a few people turned to the chatbot Do Not Pay, which helps streamline the process of filing small-claims court paperwork. In September, the owner of the chatbot — which was initially set up to help defendants fight parking tickets — added the ability to sue Equifax, and a few users are seeing the results, Yahoo! News reported.

One San Francisco resident who used Do Not Pay to sue Equifax in small-claims court won $9,100, while another user won $7,900 against Equifax.

All users have to do is plug in their information via the Do Not Pay website, file the paperwork with the court (and pay any required fees), then choose a court date, one user reported. When the court date arrives, the plaintiff has to prove Equifax was willfully negligent and show damages, such as providing proof of the cost of credit monitoring that was necessary after the data breach.

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Out of the dozen or so filed cases that were looked at, not all cases won in court, but some outcomes seemed dependent on the judge who heard the argument or the strength of the argument.

Do Not Pay is a free service, which is appealing to those who would rather not pay for an attorney or wait for the outcome of a class-action lawsuit to pan out. Joshua Browder, the creator of the Do Not Pay chatbot, told the Washington Post last fall that he designed the product to "make all small claims litigation free." Before Browder launched the Equifax portion of his chatbot service, the website had already notably challenged close to 400,000 parking tickets in London, New York City and Seattle before expanding to all 50 states.

Both plaintiffs spoken to (and others) have not received money from Equifax, and Yahoo! News noted that the company is currently appealing the judgments. Still, if one was looking to annoy Equifax with lawsuits, this would be an efficient way of doing so, one former employee of rival company TransUnion told USA Today.

"If even a couple of thousand people filed small claims cases, it would be a nightmare for Equifax to manage," said Steve Reger, vice president of data breach and fraud prevention with ConsumerDirect. "At TransUnion, we only ever had maybe a dozen going at once. I don't think they'd know what to do if that many people all filed against them at the same time."

To find out more about the filing process with Do Not Pay, TechCrunch wrote an early take on the chatbot/lawsuit process here.