Does having fraud commited on my card count against my credit score...

corganrocks

Hi,

My apologies if this has been answered elsewhere on the board but I couldn't find the answer to this by searching.

The other day I was making a purchase from a store at my local shopping centre and the cashier asked if I'd like to open up a store account. If I did I'd get a small discount on the cost of the items bought that day. For some reason I said yes, gave all my details, provided ID etc., but on the phone the guy on the other end refused the application.

A couple of months ago I was concacted by Egg to say that transactions worth about a thousand pounds had been made on my card but rejected as they weren't part of my usual spending pattern. Card was cancelled, no real harm done. But I'm wondering if perhaps something like that leads to a 'freeze' of sorts on future applications for a while, for whatever reason. If so I guess that could explain why. I'm going to send for my credit reports to check anyway but was just wondering.

thanks in advance for any help

The_Boss

I doubt it could be down to that to be honest.

Was the card you applied for a Debenham's card by any chance?

Astaroth

It can do....

When a fraud is identified it is loaded to a national database. For most frauds like third party card usage (as you seem to describe occured to you) results in only the fraudster (if known) being loaded to the database.

In cases of identity fraud however both the fraudster and victim is loaded - the victim is loaded with a special flag set so that they can be identified as a victim and so give a lender the opportuntity to do extra validation that the applicant is the geniune person and not the fraudster again.

It certainly isnt unknown for people to accidently use the wrong flags or set victims in cases which arent identity fraud.

In addition to this you can be voluntarily loaded to the database such that all applications are refered to the lenders "fraud department" who will contact you to ask for your anti-fraud password..... of cause some lenders dont want the hassle and will simply block any applicants with a fraud log.

My understanding is that the database does replicate the high level details to your credit history file with the reference agencies so you can see if there is anything by getting a copy of your file from Experian etc

Moggles_2

A couple of months ago I was contacted by Egg to say that transactions worth about a thousand pounds had been made on my card but rejected as they weren't part of my usual spending pattern.

This has happened to me twice with different lenders (Barclaycard and Royal Bank of Scotland, in my case)

The only indication on my credit file, is the change of card number in the months the replacement cards were issued. These records are indistinguishable from a card reported lost or damaged.

For peace of mind, I would check your credit file as soon as you can, to eliminate other possible causes.