Credit Confidential.com?

Ineedaname

I understand why you did it, but a company with their history isn't likely to 'get their act together' as it's all about the money from start to finish. When this company gets closed down they'll start up again, they don't care.

Just keep a very close eye on your card statements!

Fyffes

When I went through their signing up process I was essentially looking for the tell tale signs of the dirty tricks employed previously by their other brands.

Adaptive Affinity's business model has always been to part people with their money in an incredibly devious manner making use of the fact that the vast majority of people don't read terms and conditions. So whilst many would consider it morally wrong to take advantage of this, their business practices are usually borderline legal.

This is how they operate:

1) Attract customers by offering free credit checks for a trial period.

2) Within the signing up process they subtly secrete a second company which the average person will be unaware of signing up to.

3) Once the customer has seen their credit report, 99.9% of them will cancel within the free trial period. Adaptive Affinity are well aware
of this.

4) Adaptive Affinity ensure that still get their hands on people's money via the second company which nobody has any idea they've signed up for.

5) The disgruntled customer will be told they won't be refunded because they only cancelled their membership of the credit checking company and not the membership of the second company (incidentally both are owned by Adaptive Affinity).

6) They will ignore requests to prove the customer signed up to this second company and insist that you received a welcome email so it's your own fault for not reading it and cancelling the membership. They don't deem it necessary to prove they actually sent this email but will rather helpfully say it might have ended up in your spam folder.

So when I signed up to their new venture I printed and scrutinised every single word of every single page to see if there is any mention of a second company. There definately isn't and I definately haven't received any welcome email from a third party. So it'll be interesting to see if they're up to their old trick despite the intervention of the OFT telling them to pack it in.

Yes I understand that it's perhaps not advisable to sign up with this company given what I know about them. But I'm so disgusted with the way they conduct themselves that I'm prepared to be the guinea pig on this occasion.

So far Credit Confidential haven't done anything I'd consider to be deliberately devious but time will tell if my experience was a one off technical glitch or another of their meticulously planned techniques. And I'm guessing that if they do step out of line with this new venture, we'll hear about it pretty quickly on this thread.

They might not have cared about a bad reputation previously but if they've spent five million pounds on their new venture then perhaps they'll have a different attitude to a bad press this time.

lea2001gb

I signed with these people, unfortunately. Having initially logged in, I needed a copy of the report as there were a couple of entries on there that were incorrect and I needed the copy to send to the companies in question to ask why this information was on there. As soon as I tried to print the report out, the site locked up and crashed. Firstly I thought maybe it was my computer so I rebooted. Only to be told I can only view the report once a day. So I thought, ok I will log back in the following day and print it then. When I logged in the following day, I went to print the report again and guess what, the site locked up and crashed again. I emailed Credit Confidential and got an automated message saying they would respond with 48 hours. So the following day I logged in again, same thing, go to print, site locked and crashed. Over a week later I have sent several emails, tried to print numerous times with no joy to any of this. I have had no response from Credit Confidential and I still cannot print out my credit report. I have now cancelled my membership with these jokers.

fermi

Fyffes wrote: »

the OFT in recent years regarding the business practices of some of their other brands.

This?

http://www.oft.gov.uk/news-and-updates/press/2009/75-09

Fyffes

fermi wrote: »

This?

http://www.oft.gov.uk/news-and-updates/press/2009/75-09

That's the one. They've also been investigated by The Mirror..

http://blogs.mirror.co.uk/investigations/2010/09/online-shopping-firm-highstree.html

I did enjoy the irony of the company motto appearing at the top of Adaptive Affinity's website:

Our mission is to bring value directly to consumers through a range of user friendly and convenient online services.

A website that crashes and doesn't recognise card numbers it's already accepted isn't exactly going to deliver their promises is it.

And what's "user friendly" about misleading consumers (according to the OFT)?

I also found it interesting that their new company "Credit Confidential" isn't listed on Adaptive Affinity's website as one of their brands for some reason.

http://www.adaptiveaffinity.com/brands.html

They already have four credit checking companies so why on earth would they need another one? Some people might hazard a guess that their previous brands have built up such a reputation that they are no longer able to operate as freely as they would like. Hence the new brand without any negative press surrounding it.

deadkenny

Fyffes wrote: »

That's the one. They've also been investigated by The Mirror..

The must be unaware of who Credit Confidential are though as they quote them as a source of research in a recent article (sorry, I can't post links yet . It's an article about Brits being turned down for credit. Only a brief mention of them).

Seems to be a lot of money behind them though as the adverts look fairly expensive and are on a lot (especially on Sky News).

Has to be said that the regulars Experian and Equifax do free trials and hook you into paying monthly. However they do make it clear what they're doing and if you cancel, it's cancelled.

I guess these guys have seen the business model of the others and decided they want a slice of that, which is fair enough, but will they adopt the practices of the parent company is the question.

Personally I'd steer clear for now, just at least if they just use Call Credit's data.

I was curious about them though in case they offered data from all the main agencies, and how much they charge. If they were cheaper I could see it would be tempting.

fermi

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3289298

stephcox89

Would there be anyway of getting your money back if you were stupid enough to sign up and forget about it?! I signed up thinking about the 30 day free membership, didn't get any free membership at all as I was never sent any activation emails or letters from them, although they will probably say that they did. Like an idiot I just forgot about it and went on with my life thinking that if I haven't activated my account I don't membership any more, blah blah blah... 1 month later and they have taken money from my account and still NO email or letter from them with regards to my membership ID and if they think I am calling their 0845 number they can think again.. is there anyone other than them I could contact as from the sounds of this forum they aren't going to email me back as a reply to my message this morning!

Fyffes

stephcox89 wrote: »

Would there be anyway of getting your money back if you were stupid enough to sign up and forget about it?!

I don't fancy your chances to be honest. They'll just refer to the terms and conditions that you agreed to and tell you it was your responsibility to cancel the membership.

You'll definitely need to make sure the membership is now cancelled though otherwise they'll just take money again next month. There's probably an option to cancel hidden away somewhere on their website but of course you won't be able to cancel without a membership number. If I was you I'd email them over and over again until you receive an email confirming cancellation (they can identify your membership from your name and post code). I've had dealings with other brands of the Adaptive Affinity empire and, to be fair, they usually do respond to emails although it normally takes a couple of days.

katiecarol

ive just two weeks ago signed up for a 30day free trial with credit confidential and have found that over the weekend they've taken 1.95 and 9.95 out of my bank account.