Equifax and Experian

Simon_Pugsley

I understand that different companies report to equifax and/or experian, however im a little confused..

I was a silly boy just under 6 years ago, and missed alot of payments on a mobile phone account. so i have a nasty little mark on my equifax report giving me a score off 349, pretty poor. (thankfully it will disapear from my credit report in 4 months as it will be over 6 years since settled).

The strange thing is that on my experian report, using the same addresses it has given me a score of 999. The mobile phone account that i missed payments on is showing, but appeards not to have the same affect as on the experian...

Any ideas.

poppy_f1

to be honest the scoring equifax and experien give you means nothing, each lender will have their own criteria

Simon_Pugsley

Thanks poppy..

I have had near perfect credit for the past 6 years, some missed payments here and there, but nothing of any note, do you think that lenders will hold it against me for having a bad credit account almost 6 years ago.

I have had mortgages, loans and cc since and all have been fine.

edindie

It happens. With billions of peices of data there's always some mistakes!

edindie

Yes, they will hold it against you; it’s the only way they can distinguish between people. And you can be sure that given the current climate they’re going to be as picky as possible!

However, if you have lots of good data since then, you could get credit anyway as the good data could outweigh the bad.

I’d be tempted to wait till the 6 years was up though.

Moggles_2

Credit reports, when ordered directly from Experian and Equifax, are valuable. After all, this is the information lenders search when you apply for credit. Additional services like credit scores are a nice little earner for the credit reference agencies, but of little practical value to credit card applicants and certainly not worth paying extra for. I wouldn't let these numbers distract you from checking the things that really matter.

Remember credit reference agencies are there to provide your credit history, but the actual methodology (and the process of scoring itself) is done by their clients, the lenders. None of us - including the CRAs - knows what criteria are used by individual card companies. Lenders do not disclose this information. It's not uncommon for MSEs to post completely different scores from the three CRAs. I suspect that the lenders' scores, had we access to them, would be different from each other as well!

andersoc

So are Credit Scores an opional extra on a normal Credit Report, or does the report contain the score?

Cheers

Chris

Lawyer2B

Have you also seen your credit file from Call Credit?

This showed up a home shopping account which I didn't realise I had from simply requesting a catalogue. This did not shown on the other two reports.

Why not wonder over to Tesco Legal Store online and download the FREE/cheap letters for corrections to your file.

lisyloo

Credit scores are an optional extra but are a waste of money.
Lenders do their own assesment of you and no-one knows their criteria.
If you want to pay for it that's up to you, but it does not reflect the score used by any particualr lender.
It might give you a very general picture, but you can get that by looking at the report yourself.

Lawyer2B

andersoc wrote: »

So are Credit Scores an opional extra on a normal Credit Report, or does the report contain the score?

Cheers

Chris

You have to pay extra to see your credit score. The companies charge about £15.

The statutory amount for your basic credit report is £2.

Simon_Pugsley

Thanks all, i will hold fire till Decemer, when all those red numbers have disapeared.