Checkmyfile.com - A waste of time

Tipustyger

I am very cross and thought others may be saved from making the mistake I have.

I have been subscribed to checkmyfile.com for a while and noticed that no matter what I did my experian credit rating wasn't changing. To check if there was a problem, I signed upto experian's own service (credit expert and paid to see my credit rating). It was vastly different from that provided by check my file so I wrote to them asking for an explanation.

Here is the response:

"The score that you have with Experian directly is different for two
fundamental reasons. Firstly, the design of the score cards (the
algorithms that generate credit scores based on credit file information)
is different. Every lender and agency has a different scorecard, that is
their own. Each is designed for different purposes - some lenders want
high-level clients, whilst others lend to the lower end of the market,
so intrinsically information such as arrears will have a different
weighting.

Our scorecard has been designed to best reflect that of a standard UK
lender, and should give you a good idea of your creditworthiness.
Experian's own is an agency scorecard and is again different in its
makeup.

Secondly, there is less information on the Experian report provided
through checkmyfile.com so the Experian score on our site is based on
electoral roll, court information and searches - so if there are no
changes in this, the score cannot develop. Of course, this report won't
dramatically change unless you drop off the electoral roll or have court
information show."

I am not impressed at checkmyfile clearly imply that they provide you with the scores of the various credit reference agencies and do not indicate that they use an in-house system to essentially guess what they think it is based on the information they are supplied with. Even worse, they are positively useless for finding out anything relating to Experian because of how little data they are provided and so have to guess your score on (although they do say that they have very little data for them). Anyway, I needed to keep track of my credit score whilst I was desperately trying to rebuild it after some problems and thought this would help. I've now asked for my subscriptuion to be cancelled and am considering writing a letter of complaint.

I know Martin doesn't recommend these services but I thought it was worth the cost because of how much I knew my financial situation would be changing in a short space of time. Now I wish I hadn't bothered at all or at least just used one of the services provided by either exerian or equifax directly. Anyway, I thought this might help someone. Meanwhile, lesson learnt.