Credit Reference Agencies - who uses who discussion

deez99

Do soft searches appear on the report ?

and if not then presumably I will not know about them either

sutton111

Yes soft searches appear on your credit file but are only seen by you. Have you checked your on-line credit file? It may be an idea so you can see whats' what.

wolfie665

Hi,

I just wonder if anybody can help me. I've checked with checkmyfile all 3 agencies.

With Equifax I've high rating score 886
With Callcredit I've high rating score 905
With Experian I've low rating score 681

checkmyfile have loan recomendation facility and they have recomended me A & L.

Unfortunately A & L searched Exp and refused the loan.

My question is are there any loan providers which for sure use EQ or CC only?

Why exactly is such big difference in ratings?

thank you

cheers

456789

I guess the difference is because more companies use Experian than the others so the others have less activity reported on them

BigTA78

I've been subscribing to Experian for about 6 months so far after being rejected for a balance transfer credit card. Despite them offering me one two months ago.
I've corrected some issues with my report, registered to vote and paid off all my debt. Sure enough I've seen my score increase to 816 which is in the upper regions of fair. I'm hoping it will have improved to >880 (which is good) by the time I want to apply for a mortgage in 3-4 months time.

I thought I'd better check with the other two agencies in case my mortgage company (The Co-Op) uses those. I have to use the Co-Op as I'm going with a shared Equity scheme. I used CheckMyFile to look at all three. I found that my Experian score through CheckMyFile was 649, not 816. I queried this and got a response almost immediately - kudos on the speed :j

"The Experian report is OK-.- it`s simply that Experian reports considerably less information than the other agencies on its online link to us. This is a public data file and therefore holds no credit information. Just information regarding Electoral Roll details, court information and non credit related search information.

The Equifax and Callcredit searches you can see on checkmyfile.com are very similar to the reports that the larger 200 lenders see, whereas the Experian one is much more like the report seen by the vast majority of companies in the UK, landlords, employers, etc. The mix of information is quite different.

As such you would never have a high score on a public data file as there is far less data on which to base a score. The average score on a public data file is about 450 so there really is nothing to worry about here as your score is well above that at 649."

Which is completely the opposite of what the site says (750 being the average).

Aside from that I noticed that my Callcredit score was pants. There was so much out of date and missing stuff that I've e-mailed them to set it straight.

They are still trying to generate my Equifax one - guess they had to send all the data off to NASA to get them to calculate it.

I've come to conclusion that it's all b*ll*cks really. Who know's what any credit agency holds an whether it's up to date. It's basically a lottery. Sometimes I've been given credit on stuff and sometimes not. It all depends on whether you're wearing your lucky socks at the time.

mandy130

Hi advice needed,

My dad is 62...he is retired but works part time, he wants to apply for a loan but doesn't know who would be best to go with. We checked his credit report with experian and his credit rating is 888, is says he has no available credit and that he is using 0% of his available credit. The only thing he has is a current account with Natwest and an overdraft with them which he is using 440£ of. Should he apply for a loan or would he just get turned down as he has no credit cards or credit accounts other then his natwest account and his mastro card.

Any info would be good.

Mandy x

Bexter

As is all over the news today, Tesco Personal Finance have broken away from RBS and launched their own bank. Just thought someone might be interested to know that they seem to use Experian for credit card applications and Equifax for loans.

Rather bizarrely, I applied for a credit card and the website crashed so I thought it hadn't gone through. I forgot about it but a couple of days later applied for a loan instead. Got home that night and had a rejection letter for the credit card so was annoyed I'd wasted an application on the loan too.

Not so! Got a letter the next day to so the loan application had been accepted!! And my rating has been abysmal for years - had a Trust Deed (like IVA) nearly 6 years ago so that's all still on my file and yet I got a 10% rate so very pleased indeed. Very easy process too, can recommend.

love_the_messenger

Bexter wrote: »

As is all over the news today, Tesco Personal Finance have broken away from RBS and launched their own bank. Just thought someone might be interested to know that they seem to use Experian for credit card applications and Equifax for loans.

Rather bizarrely, I applied for a credit card and the website crashed so I thought it hadn't gone through. I forgot about it but a couple of days later applied for a loan instead. Got home that night and had a rejection letter for the credit card so was annoyed I'd wasted an application on the loan too.

Not so! Got a letter the next day to so the loan application had been accepted!! And my rating has been abysmal for years - had a Trust Deed (like IVA) nearly 6 years ago so that's all still on my file and yet I got a 10% rate so very pleased indeed. Very easy process too, can recommend.

Anybody else applied for one of these new Tesco Loans? Do they definitely use Equifax?

Innocent_Guy

love_the_messenger wrote: »

Anybody else applied for one of these new Tesco Loans? Do they definitely use Equifax?

Are tesco strict with loans?

What naughties did you have on your file.

Bexter

All I can tell you is they definitely searched Equifax only for mine - I have access to Experian too and it's not on there. Also, they called me to double check electoral roll info as we moved recently and the woman actually said they check Equifax.

As for my file - about 10 defaults back in 2003 before the trust deed kicked in. Some of them showing up to 6 months late payments. Plus the TD is still on my file so all in all, I considered myself very lucky to get a Vanquis card 18 months ago..

Just seems like Tesco might be worth a try - I've rebuilt clean credit over the last year but with all that still on my file most lenders wouldn't consider me at all.