Callcredit v Experian v Equifax

JayS_3 · 15 February 2005 at 5:04PM

Protect youself agains the identity theft epidemic, Money, Sunday Times, 6 February 2005

This article is about the rising crime of identity theft/fraud and suggests we should all be more careful etc as I am sure everyone reading this site with a bit of financial savvy knows. It also advocates signing up to one of the credit-reference agencies checking/alert services. It points out Callcredit's special offer for February.

I've heard of Experian and Equifax, but not Callcredit. I was thinking about signing up to one of the services, but each only monitors it's own files. Therefore, potentially, if you sign up to one, and the identity theft goes through one of the others, you have missed picking up on it.

I think it costs around £50 for Experian. Callcredit annual subscription is £22.49 and the alert service is £29.99 until March 1, then it goes up to £29.99 and £39.99, however a one-off check costs £7.50. Equifax costs £8.25 for a one-off check, I'm not sure if they do an annual subscription.

Which is the most comprehensive, therefore, most likely to show up any activitity on your financial security?

Do any of you use any of the above checks? Are you considering using one, or all? Any comments or suggestions or advice please?

Thanks for any help offered.

Jay

Darryl · 15 February 2005 at 5:47PM

I'd say send £2 to each one and request a paper copy of your credit file(s). £6 for all three is cheaper than callcredit's online one-off report. And you could get all 3 almost every month for less than the cost of an annual subscription to one of these online services.

Darryl.

crazyhazy · 15 February 2005 at 6:08PM

I w2ork in financial services and have never heard of call credit either. We use equifax first and if any other checks are required then experian. We are part of rbs, so i would imagine this is similar to what most companies would do.

Galstonian · 15 February 2005 at 6:15PM

Don't get too confused by credit checks (i.e. searches) as opposed to credit history. I have found that many lenders may use equifax for searches but they report history to more than one agency (many use all three). You should get an alert when the history changes even if the search was not with the company you use.

cifpower · 15 February 2005 at 6:27PM

Which companies use CallCredit? Does anyone know? I have only seen Equifax or Experian.

Galstonian · 15 February 2005 at 6:35PM

HFC, Egg, Nationwide, Lloyds TSB, Barclaycard, Halifax, Goldfish to name but a few.

Notable exceptions: MBNA, Mint, Capital One.

Your results may vary, this is only drawn from my limited experience.

Callcredit v Experian v Equifax

Comments

Confirm your email address to Create Threads and Reply

🚀 Getting Started

Categories

Is this how you want to be seen?

Get our FREE Weekly email full of deals & guides - and it’s spam-free