MSE News: New totally free way to get your Experian Credit Report

I was recently considering applying for a re-mortgage to have an extension built so I did what we are told to do and checked the CRAs. Clearscore.com says I'm goodish. Certainly over UK average. Noddle and MSE experian credit club say I'm borderline fair. Wanting to get more info I signed up for the full experian report. Both the score and negative factors were completely different to that given through the MSE credit club. Almost 100 lower on the full report than the MSE report and more negatives on the full report than the MSE report. I followed them both for nearly 3 months and they were never close to being the same.

Experian reckon I should do something to fix my credit score and their recommendation is that I apply for some extremely expensive credit cards, which, obviously, they will help me to find.

Straight away that should ring alarm bells. The same people who are giving me the score will offer to find a way to fix it and no doubt pick up a commission. And what a way to fix it as well. According to their "score" I'm bad with credit and the fix is to offer me the most expensive credit available.

So I used their "credit matcher" service to look for mortgages only to be told that no products met my needs. Despite the fact that I have a mortgage and haven't missed a payment in 27 years, there isn't a single mortgage on the market that they can find that is suitable for my level of risk according to experian.

Anyway, I decided to ignore the score and apply to the Halifax and 3 days later I was accepted with an excellent 5 year fix and, even with the extra borrowing the whole mortgage is finished in 8 years.

And then even more experian nonsense. Shortly after applying and before being accepted I received an alert email telling me that someone had searched my details and I should check immediately. I was fairly sure it was the Halifax but checked anyway. And it's not there. Nothing new under alerts since the last update 2 weeks previously. And not there the day after either.

Nor have they yet responded to my customer service request to tell me why I can't see an alert that they emailed me about. And, as of this morning, the alert is still not showing although my credit score has dropped by over 60. The reason ? I've apparently applied for credit. So having applied for and then been accepted for a product they said I was unlikely to get, my score has gone down. But only on full experian. I will have to wait for MSE to catch up.

So the alerts are worth nothing, the data is partially random, the score meaningless, they have a foot in both camps (setting your score and selling you things to fix it) and they don't respond to customer service enquiries.

My advice would be not to bother. You will spend more time worrying about your score (it caused me sleepless nights) and those with low scores will be bombarded with offers for unsuitable products.

Pay your bills on time, take advice if you are in debt and whatever you do, don't be tempted to "fix" your score by getting a credit card or loan at extortionate rates. And certainly don't do what I did and lose sleep over this meaningless number.

If they worked, the alerts are about the only thing worth having from a CRA but my experience is that they don't work.

I've now canceled my full experian account.

Regards
Peter
p.s.
My existing 27yr old mortgage isn't listed as an active account with any of the three CRAs. Good to see they are scoring with the correct data.