o2 not responding to notice of error on credit report

brynyhew

Hi All,

I'm a long time lurker on MSE so I know there are some real geniuses out there; I hope one of you can help me with my first post...

Please bear with me, it's quite a long story, in essence I have an unresolved default on my credit file for an amount that I do not owe O2, and never have, and they are being very slow to respond to my complaints. If you don’t need detail, please skip to the last paragraph now.

Some time around April 2011 I broke my phone, had been paying monthly for phone insurance with o2 for years and decided to make a claim on that insurance. When I called I was informed that the excess on my insurance was £150, I thought that was quite steep but was assured I'd be able to cancel the claim if I called back before close of business that day. Within an hour of finishing the phone call I found I could replace my phone with a new model from ebay for £100, thus saving £50. I called o2 back to cancel the insurance claim as discussed, and at that point I thought everything had gone as well as could be expected.

The following month my o2 bill came in, showing the £150 insurance excess. Obviously I called o2 to dispute this with them, was assured they would correct the mistake and again, thought all was as well as it could be.

Now, this is all almost a year ago, I'm a little wooly on the details, I know this continued for another couple of months, I complained to o2 repeatedly, both over the phone and via email. I escalated as far as I could at the time, and cancelled my o2 contract. The crux of the issue was that the insurance claim hadn't been cancelled properly so although I had never received a replacement phone, o2's insurance providers were still chasing the excess. Once I closed my contract I was fobbed off with customer services telling me that the insurance company can take up to 12 weeks to resolve a complaint of this sort and that they would chase it up for me and contact me if there were any issues.

So, foolishly, I let them get on with it and eventually forgot all about it.

In April 2012 I checked my Experian credit report to find that my o2 account was listed as 9 months in default for £150. Obviously that cancelled insurance claim has still not been resolved. After phoning and complaining some more I was given the Credit File Referrals email address, I emailed them on 23rd April and copied in the o2 Complaint Review Service for good measure. I've since had a phone call from the complaints review team to assure me (again) that they were dealing with it, but 15 days later haven’t received anyhing in writing and had absolutely no response from credit file referrals. My Experian report is still showing all of the default notices, however I have had a new bill from o2 showing a £150 credit for "goodwill customer dispute", so at least on that front they are no longer stating I owe them anything.

So, I have a few questions:

1) Is it realistic to believe that the default notice can be removed entirely from my file, rather than marked as settled? As this is an amount that I have never actually owed o2 I am annoyed that it is creating negative impact on my credit score.

2) Is there anything more I can do to speed things up and/or claim some kind of compensation from o2 for all the inconvenience/time wasting phone calls/stress...

3) How long is it reasonable to allow for any changes to be made to my credit file?

Thank you for you time!

Bry

NFH

When I suffered incorrect adverse data on my credit report, I informed the organisations concerned that their actions were libellous and offered them an out-of-court settlement of instructing the credit agencies to remove the incorrect records and a payment of £75 to £100, equating to a year's subscription to the credit agencies' monitoring services. In both cases, the organisations concerned complied quickly. If you have suffered other losses, for example being denied a mortgage on a lower interest rate, you could claim for those losses too.

gecko2

O2 have one of the worst customer service deptartments (if you can call it that) of any company I have dealt with.

You would be better off going to the ombudsman and getting them to deal with them on your behalf. I believe it was OTELO.

grumbler

gecko2 wrote: »

... I believe it was OTELO.

In fact it is http://www.ombudsman-services.org/communications.html

jon142

when i has issues with o2, i contacted the complaint team and spoke to a gent called, Jamie Chadwick. he dealt with all the credit reference info and got it all removed.

if you can PROVE its not your fault, nothing to do with you they will remove it.

If they get so much of a sniff its your fault they will play hardball.