Although the situation is ideal for class action, federal law caps the penalty at $500,000 for class action and so depending on the number of class members the amount I'd get as a class representative is likely less than what I'd get in an individual case.

So you don't really care about others, just yourself. A class action, could gain you near nothing but cost Google millions, or you could gain 10k and google could lose 10k.

Uh, if the class action damages cap is 500k then it’s only worth 500k to Google…

I am very glad the OP is pursuing action at all; it is far too easy to simply let violations of the law slide (and companies work hard to make it so). He deserves praise for that. The few of us who go through this stressful months or years-long journey deserve all the support we can give them. We should try to avoid giving petty, selfish critiques from the backseat.

I do get why you might feel that way, but first by me going alone it doesn't prevent someone else from filing a class action.

Yeah that's incredibly selfish. Is the point to hit Google for acting antisocially and doing this same song and dance potentially with anyone, or just to get compensated for the brazen demands on your apparently extremely valuable time?

Both. Regardless of the route, they would change their practices and the law does allow for equitable relief to get them to stop doing the action.

Unfortunately, '...but it is a pretty unique issue.'

Doesn’t take that much time to slap a fraud alert on your credit and force this bureaucratic process of theirs to trigger.

Probably isn’t worth the legal fees though.

It likely is not. Just the filing fees in federal court can be close to $500 and I believe the ECOA requires the action be brought in federal court.

Could this be ripe for an automated lawsuit app, like the one to fight against bogus parking fines?

How many could be won before Google finally fixes it?

I wonder if Google would cut off accounts associated with suing Google.

That is one of my biggest concerns, although in this case that would hopefully be a PR disaster.

I would be surprised if they didn't.