What Experian doesnt tell you

commonsense_3

I got my free-for-30-days credit report from Experian having never had a report before. I was encouraged to do this by the passport agency to discover if there was any fraud. Experian took my one and only credit card details for future payment and then did not even include this credit card as part of my report. My report came back as very good but they had made no effort to include my one and only credit card! I have cancelled my months free trial but I would urge anyone who is in difficulty to be more thorough than Experian.:o

YorkshireBoy

commonsense wrote: »

Experian took my one and only credit card details for future payment

How long have you had it? If it was taken out before 1998, and has been managed well, there's every chance the provider doesn't report it to the CRAs.

My report came back as very good

Without any evidence of managing credit card debt? You must have plenty of mortgage, loan, current account, mobile phone data on there then? Otherwise how could they assess it as good?

but they had made no effort to include my one and only credit card!

Made no effort? They only hold information given to them by the lenders. Your problem isn't with Experian, but with your card provider.

...I would urge anyone who is in difficulty to be more thorough than Experian.:o

By checking with Equifax and CallCredit as well you mean?

CpdButWhy

YorkshireBoy wrote: »

They only hold information given to them by the lenders. Your problem isn't with Experian, but with your card provider.

Not necessarily. Due to addresses reported in slightly different formats, Experian may not find the account which should belong to your report even though they have it. So the problem may lie at Experian.

YorkshireBoy

CpdButWhy wrote: »

Not necessarily. Due to addresses reported in slightly different formats, Experian may not find the account which should belong to your report even though they have it. So the problem may lie at Experian.

Think about what you've written there for a moment.

Who do you think provides the addresses to Experian et al? That's right...the lenders provide them, along with council electoral services, mobile phone providers, etc. Experian just set up 'accounts' with the information given to them.

I agree Experian et al may be able to help resolve address format issues, but the root cause ultimately lies with the people providing the CRAs with the data in the first place.

2sides2everystory

No, CpdButWhy is correct. It is quite possible that all versions of the address are correct but it is common knowledge (which means the CRAs should be on top of it) that due to mandatory Address 2 fields and limited drop down boxes for counties used in applications you can get quite different results:

My simplest and most acceptable address is of the form:

Mr 2s 2ev
999 Winding Road
London
Postcode

But I also have bills arriving quite correctly addressed to:

Mr 2s 2ev
999 Winding Road
Traditional Name For Area
London
Postcode

Mr 2s 2ev
999 Winding Road
Other Traditional Name For Area
London
Postcode

Mr 2s 2ev
999 Winding Road
Traditional Name For Area or Other Traditional Name for Area
London
Greater London
Postcode

or even

Mr 2s 2ev
999 Winding Road
London
London
Postcode

Now imagine the variations with Flat numbers where there is a Block name and where there is also a road number for the block.

These are NOT tasks for the individual reporters to unravel. They most definitely are variations which the CRA must nail or they rightly attract criticism.

YorkshireBoy

2sides2everystory wrote: »

They most definitely are variations which the CRA must nail or they rightly attract criticism.

I agree where post code and house number are provided (as in your first batch above) then the CRA should be able to link any variations in address line 2, local area, or even county to the one report.

Degenerate

Regarding the address issue, discrepancies should be resolved by reference to the standardized address formats published by the Royal Mail in their postcode database. All reporting institutions and CRAs should be using this for accuracy. That said, it still has been known for address discrepancies to occur, and for CRA searches to produce differing results because of them.

Dr_Cuckoo3

What are people's views on the failure of some lenders to place a gap between the two parts of a postcode ?

SW1A1AA instead of SW1A 1AA ,Sygma Bank do this and Barclays have also

This has occurred with 5 ,6 and 7 digit postcodes

I doubt that lenders necessarily see the "same" file as the consumer - for example both my Experian and Equifax files have different glitches at the moment

I am surprised nobody else has mentioned the above - I doubt that I am the only person affected

2sides2everystory

What are people's views on the failure of some lenders to place a gap between the two parts of a postcode ? ... SW1A1AA instead of SW1A 1AA ... I am surprised nobody else has mentioned the above - I doubt that I am the only person affected

The problems to be solved by all these very predictable differences are nothing new to any self-respecting cross-platform database developer. All we are seeing is the result of lazy or incompetent database development and administration which in the CRAs' case you would have thought was fundamental to their reputation to the extent they wouldn't be caught so often with pants down. As usual they have been allowed to build up such power and monopoly that they can get away with half a job or worse.

chexum

2sides2everystory wrote: »

The problems to be solved by all these very predictable differences are nothing new to any self-respecting cross-platform database developer. All we are seeing is the result of lazy or incompetent database development and administration which in the CRAs' case you would have thought was fundamental to their reputation to the extent they wouldn't be caught so often with pants down. As usual they have been allowed to build up such power and monopoly that they can get away with half a job or worse.

It's not even just a failure to compare - the post codes are supposed to have a unique normalisation: the digit-letter-letter is always the last part. There should be absolutely no consequence of leaving the space out, or adding random spaces, as there's only one way it should have been written.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postcodes_in_the_United_Kingdom#Format
According to wikipedia, the following post code formats are possible:

A9 9AA
A99 9AA
AA9 9AA
AA99 9AA
A9A 9AA
AA9A 9AA

With the post codes, all of the UK house numbers can be compressed to something like:
10,SW1A1AA

House/company names, numbers with letter postfixes, and flat numbers complicate this somewhat but it's still very predictable.

It takes about 10 minutes of research to find the rules, if any CRAs database cannot match up the same address with only postcode spaces being the problem, then it's way beyond broken (which is why I don't really believe it, to be honest). Although I can imagine if the CRA told the banks to use a specific format for efficiency and they may not check if the banks are indeed following it, but it doesn't really make sense at this level.

The only time I have seen problems was whether 10 a or 10a is different, because "10 a" might be "flat a" at "house 10", whereas "10a" is always "house 10a".

PurplePow

YorkshireBoy wrote: »

Think about what you've written there for a moment.

Who do you think provides the addresses to Experian et al? That's right...the lenders provide them, along with council electoral services, mobile phone providers, etc. Experian just set up 'accounts' with the information given to them.

I agree Experian et al may be able to help resolve address format issues, but the root cause ultimately lies with the people providing the CRAs with the data in the first place.

I disagree. I had a big problem with Experian recently over how they format my address. Equifax got it right but nothing at all was appearing on my Experian report. They eventually got it sorted out for me and admitted it was a problem on their end which they're currently trying to fix.