Credit rating - changing groups and score decreasing?

mookett

Hi - at the moment we are working really hard on repairing my husband's credit rating, which is in the 300s. Recently experian had him as not being on the electoral roll, (even though he is an elected borough councillor) which he complained about as was eventually rectified.

The problem was, his score went down! He went from 'good' to 'poor'! Experian say it is because he has moved into a new group of more credit worthy people, and now his score is lower in comparision to others in his group.

Anyone heard of this? There is no explanation on the website, and no mention of groups. So we thought his score was quite good (as he was 'good') but actually we find out it is much worse than we thought.

We are utterly confused...

mookett

Debt_Free_Chick

Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a "credit rating", as such. The system you explain is one used by Experian. You will need to read the stuff on the website to fully understand what the rating means.

If you want to borrow money (credit, debt etc), then (some) lenders will search your Experian Credit File. They do not get a rating from Experian, they get a report that shows how good you've been at paying off existing debts. The report shows if you have been late with a payment, if you have a default, if you have a CCJ etc...

Your credit file is linked to you through your address and your identity is linked through the electoral roll.

Experian may be grouping you for the purpose of their credit rating, but lenders do not use Experian's rating - they form their own opinion, using the credit record, and the criteria differs from one lender to another. The Experian rating means nothing at all.

I rather feel you have bought a clever piece of marketing from Experian .... they might offer to give you "a" credit rating, but in practice, that's of no interest to anyone else. It's your credit record that lenders are interested in.

Is your husband finding it difficult to get credit? Has he been turned down for loans or credit cards? Have you requested a copy of his credit record from Experian, and Equifax - they only cost £2 (each).

HTH

JasonW_2

Must admit, I bought my report and rating from equifax today. Cost £11 all in, and while I know I can get it cheaper, I wanted to see it today and I know I can do online disputes and stuff, which I have had to do since vodafone have wrong information about me saying I have missed payments. Even called vodafone who confirmed I hadnt missed any payments and there was nothing adverse on my account at all! Not happy.


Their credit rating, which I already knew is only their version of how a lender might score you, and I knew this, but wanted some idea of where I was sitting against the average UK person. Unfortunately they say I have defauled in the last 24 months, but again, I have NOT defaulted in the last 5 years!!!

Send back a snippy online dispute and will see what they say about it all.

I just like the convenience of seeing it right then and there, and upto 30 days access and the online disputes are handy as well.

JW

mookett

Thanks for that. It's reassuring that lenders etc will see your report, not a 'rating'. We thought that if you applied for something lenders would see your score (a la experian). We did query it with them, as initially there was no explanation at all, but they said just what I said in my first post. He had moved up a group and therefore compared to others he was now worse.

We get an online report and rating (the £11 one) regularly. Must admit, have only done experian though. Should we do equifax to?

Yeah, husband has been turned down for credit, only last week in fact. There has been some defaults in the past, and taking out further credit to maintain existing stuff etc. The worst was when we applied for a mortgage and were given a really good rate, only to realise they had got his date of birth wrong. We didn't even think about the fact that they would have run a check on him and would have come up with nothing with that DOB! When we gave them the correct DOB, the correct credit report came up and they withdrew the offer. Then offered us a different rate... :eek:

Still, we laugh about it now... just!

Debt_Free_Chick

Hello Mookett

Just to confirm ... lenders see the credit report - there is no such thing as a universal "rating". Different lenders "score" people in different ways according to their credit report, address, age, occupation, marital status ... etc etc.

However, your hubbie's difficulty with credit will be down to his defaults. No point in applying for more credit until they disappear and that takes 6 years from the date of the default.

If you are paying Experian £11 "regularly", I think they do unlimited updates/ access to your report for a year. This might be worth considering, although I doubt it if you (he) is not applying for credit.

Yes - you should get at least the £2 report from Equifax too. The reason being that some lenders use one of them, some use the other, and others use both!

Can we help with your debt management? I hope you know that you only need to post.

Good luck

mookett

Thank you so much. You really know how to take the fear out of a situation! For now we are going to keep on being careful with our budget and being patient!

mrtreefrog

Hi i to have an exprian account i pay £5.95 pcm i have 6 accounts registered on thier file,i've lived at my present address for nearly 8 years am on the electoral role,my accounts are roughly 18 months old all are satisfactory,never missed a payment or been late paying,yet evertime i buy my credit score from them it seems to go down and not up as you would expect being as they can see for at least the last 18 months or so i can handle my finances,it costs me £5.95 each time i buy my score from them i think this is some kind of fiddle,they have a forecasting tool that shows what your score with them is supposed to be in 6 months if you follow thier guide and advice,absolute rubbish ive followed it to the letter and it still doesn't go up to what they say,maybe thier in cahoots with lenders or they just want you to keep spending £5.95 every couple of month just to see if you can make yourself feel better by seeing you score improving,only to be dissapointed by it staying the same(poor),or dropping to very poor when you do everything right,and when you call them for an explanation still no satisfactory answer,they all give you a different answer.i'm totaly baffled by this nonsence.....???????

bathgatebuyer

I get Credit Expert as a benefit through my work and used to have a personal account with them while I sorted out my bank charges, PPI, etc, and was trying to keep track of the information they published about me.

Anyhow, I had to cloe the personal account and re-register with the one from work. Of course, they didn't close the first one and continued to charge me for it. Of more interest was that the two reports contained two different sets of information! I'd just settled an RBoS credit card by putting £2K of hard earned cash into it and closing it off - it showed on one Credit Expert report and not the other! So, I've not got a huge amount of faith in the info provided to lenders as and when they check my report. I know from experience of monitoring my report that settling an account by paying it up in full makes a huge difference to how you are viewed by lenders, and it seems that I'm being sold a bit short by the CRA in this instance.

They're on their last chance of sorting it out as far as I'm concerned. If it isn't, I'll by taking the details of their inconsistencies to the ICO.

bathgatebuyer

mrtreefrog wrote: »

,yet evertime i buy my credit score from them it seems to go down and not up as you would expect being as they can see for at least the last 18 months or so i can handle my finances,it costs me £5.95 each time i buy my score from them i think this is some kind of fiddle,

That's my experience too. At one point 4 years ago, my score was about 425, then it went as high as 840, but after paying off some debts and closing credit card accounts I wasn't using, it went back down to 540 :rolleyes: So, even after tidying up my file, paying off the debt and the money I was borrowing, they thought of me as being in a worse of position than I was when I had an extra £4k of debt on top of that. All very strange!