Business ProfileforVivint Smart Home

On April 29, 2021, Vivint Smart Home, Inc. (Vivint) entered into a Settlement Agreement with The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to settle a complaint filed alleging Vivint violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) by improperly obtaining credit reports in order to qualify potential customers for financing for its smart home monitoring and security products. The FTC also alleged that Vivint violated the FTC's Red Flags Rule by failing to implement an identity theft prevention program, which is required of certain companies that regularly use or obtain credit reports. 

The FTC alleged that some Vivint sales representatives used a process known as "white paging", which involved finding another consumer with the same or a similar name and using that consumer's credit history to qualify the prospective unqualified customers. Vivint sales representatives sometimes asked customers to provide the  name of someone they knew who had better credit, such as a relative, then added that innocent third=party as a co-signer to the account without their permission, and used their credit history to qualify the prospective customer. If customers qualified using these deceptive tactics later defaulted on their loans, Vivint referred the innocent third party to is debt buyer, potentially harming that consumer's credit and subjecting them to debt collectors, the FTC alleged. Many consumers whose credit reports were misused by Vivint sales representatives complained to the FTC that they were victims of identity theft after being contacted by Vivint's debt collectors. 

The FTC alleged that Vivint was aware of the problem, and in fact terminated many sales representatives for misconduct only to rehire some of them shortly thereafter. 

The Settlement Agreement requires Vivint to implement an employee monitoring and training program, as well as an identity theft prevention program. The company must also establish a customer service task force to verity that accounts belong to the right customer before referring any account to a debt collector, and must assist consumers who were improperly referred to debt collectors. In addition, Vivint must pay a $15 million civil penalty and an additional $5 million to compensate injured consumers. 

People who did not sign up for Vivint’s services but were contacted by debt collectors or found Vivint accounts improperly listed on their credit reports may be eligible for compensation from this settlement and can sign up for email updates here.