Experian Credit Report! Advise Please.

PsyberPixie

Not sure if this is the correct place for this thread.

I run a limited company, we have been going for just over two years now and all our accounts are good.

We were sourcing a new supplier and they ran a credit check on us; we use a credit checking service ourselves "Credit Safe UK" and on there our credit file is very good. However the new supplier used "Experian" and they gave us a really bad credit score! On further investigation its seems that they are using data that is over two years old mainly the address.

When we first incorporated the company we used our home address as both the registered address and the trading address. Once we found premises we updated the details with companies house and thought nothing more of it. We have recently moved as we are expanding to larger office space and so updated the details with companies house. "Credit Safe UK" have already accepted this change and its showing correctly but "Experian" are giving us a bad credit report based on data that is 2 years out of date i.e. they're using our old home address. We tried calling them to find out why this was and they will not tell us and said to dispute any information they hold we will have to pay £100 to buy the credit report from them to see whats wrong. They will not accept anyone elses data; basically some could consider this to be blackmailing us by giving us a bad credit rating and in order to dispute the data they hold we have to pay for it.

If this was any other financial based entity they would have at least some regulation, how is this supposed to help small businesses? We have never had any credit to miss any payments on to get a really bad credit rating; so at the very least we should have a neutral credit rating. We basically don't understand how one company can use the same set of data as another but come to a different conclusion especially considering that we're two years old have never missed any rent payments, no CCJs, etc.

Has anyone else had any experience of this? How did you resolve this issue, and what can i do without giving into experien. The details they are releasing about my company could be construed as "Defamation" what do you think?

Apples2

There is an Experian Company Representative on these boards.

If you can search him/her out, you could get some free advice/help direct from them

Here you go, try sending a PM
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/member.php?u=9005

Tixy

You are presumably talking about your company credit report - do you know which experian brand your supplier used (there are a number of different ones).

On further investigation its seems that they are using data that is over two years old mainly the address.
How did you find this out? what have you seen?
Will the supplier allow you to see what experian gave them?

Where did the £100 price tag come from? you might want to consider looking at the experian brand busibody which just costs £5 to look out or £12 for the more deatiled one, if there is something fundamentally wrong on that you could dispute it without paying out such a lot.
These reports don't take into account everything that the commercial delphi scores do (such as the impact of the industry you are in etc) but might be a starting point for you.

PsyberPixie

Yeah the company credit record, we went direct to experian.

We spoke with the supplier which said the issue was high risk registered office something to do with the trading address being incorrect.

Then spoke with Experian who said the address detail they had which was our home address when we first set up the company. They also told us that just because we updated companies house records we need to write to them direct to get the address changed... Why would I need to write to all credit reference agencies to change the address when this is done on an official capacity through companies house who the say they get their information from.

The £100 price tag came direct from Experian when speaking on the phone to them but thanks to the heads up on "Busibody" do these do company credit files as this was the excuse they gave for the ridiculously expensive price tag because its a company file not a personal file.

We have also found out that each credit reference agency uses the information they have differently to produce the credit file/score and that there is no regulation, or even a standardised way of doing things within the industry. This means that Experian rate us 6/100 Credit Safe UK rate us 50/100 and Equifax could rate us something completely different!

This sounds insane to me and makes credit scoring and ratings completely pointless, as it depends which credit agency any given company uses to give you a score and is in no way a factual representation of how credit worthy a company actually is! Credit Safe UK and I quote said "There is absolutely nothing on your credit report that warrants a bad score".

Thanks for the replies ill try contacting the experian representative.

Tixy

Credit scoring is fairly pointless - its the same a personal credit scores - this forum is littered with people being told they are not worth anything. Different places (credit reference agencies or lenders) put a different emphasis on different things.

Busibody do company credit reports and are part of experian - I think just cut down versions (I haven't actually ordered any).

Experian should be keeping their files up to date with companies house (well within a month or so). But whilst a registered address should update automatically a trading address is more subjective. Is your registered address at companies house now your business premises? And is that not correct on the experian report (as far as you know)? Or is it that experian have one address as your trading and one as your registered and they are suggesting that could be a negative?

PsyberPixie

The Experian Representative does not allow PMs though I have email customer services with the details hopefully they will get the link and be able to make a comment either on here or privately to help resolve the issue.

PsyberPixie

Both addresses were changed with companies house, which other credit reference agencies have updated. I'm unsure as to any of the data Experian have as I refuse to pay £100 to check if the data is correct, though I will look into the other company you suggested to see what they provide and if it would be sufficient to raise a dispute.

They are more than suggesting its a negative as its been thrown up as High Risk, which really makes no sense as there are many businesses out there with different trading addresses to registered addresses, there of course could be something that Experian views as a flaw; I'm not sure what this could be as I said earlier we have not had anything that could cause us bad credit, that other agencies deem as a non issue.