Informal agreement stays on my credit history for 11 ELEVEN years!

savagej

Yep, if the question says have you ever been made bankrupt or have you ever had court action taken against you for non-payment of debt (e.g. CCJ, HCJ, Decree) then that will be published in the appropriate copy of the Gazette and can be looked up any time afterwards.

However, I stated "on your file", a bankrupty drops off of a credit reference file 6 years from the date the bankrupty petiton was granted by the court. If a company wished to look for bankrupties older than 6 years they would need access to on-line copies of the Gazette (or go to the local public library) for Northern Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales, and they would have to satisfy themselves that the advert in the Gazette was for the same person they are searching for.

izools

Although thanks to examples cited by myself and the good jen245 I think savagej and many other members are much the wiser about the gaping difference in effect between an AP and Bankruptcy

Thank you for being so receptive to my example savagej; a lot of members (niddy) would be all "MNERRRR YOU'RE WRONG I'M NOT LISTENING TO YOUR PROOF LA LA LA LA LA" (ergo my slightly defensive tone in my original reply).

I myself was absolutely shocked to see how little effect the AP had on my mother's ability to obtain credit - and how she managed to keep that AP in place for so long I don't know but credit to her, when I pointed out just over a year ago "So why is this still in an AP?" she took it out of AP ASAP.

Funny thing is, she called Barclaycard what felt like a dozen times and was passed from pillar to post and no one had a clue how to take it out of an AP!

In the end we had to write to them several times to reinstate the account to one that was interest bearining; it's almost as if they wanted the debt to depreciate. And before anyone suggests it, the account was never with a DCA, and she continued to get Barclaycard statements throughout the seven years, they simply stated APR 0% "Please continue to make your agreed minimum repayments of £50 per month".

Hey ho, done and dusted now