Experian - How they view you

Bosie

It's been about 12 month's since I last saw my Experian report I used their Credit Expert. So renewed the membership and first shock how much it has gone up!
Anyway, my point it had this Red apostrophe stating a warning on my searches. It said 8 searches in a 12 month period too much.

When I broke the searches down 2 were only generic checks one was actually Experian? 3 were from mid last year and will be dropping off. I recently joined MSE's energy club and through the club changed over to SSE fixed till until 2015. But they SSE did a credit check which didn't know they did. Been with other energy companies over the years and never been credit checked.

Then finally one credit check for an M&S bank account.
So to me Experian are seeing 8 searches and saying warning, when if you break the searches down, I personally don't think there's too much to warrant an alarm.
I'm sure generic searches are not seen by creditors.
Plus a utilities search isn't like a search for a loan credit card.

Only using it for a month as it's far too expensive.

YorkshireBoy

Any particular reason why you didn't just get a £2 statutory report posted to you?

Experian_company_representative

Only credit application searches can affect your credit rating - the others don't count. This Experian fact sheet gives more advice on this. I'm sorry if we haven't made it very clear on your credit report.

James Jones

Buzby

In answer to your title - they view you as a 'resource', not only a supplier of data, but mug enough to pay them to see what they hold on you!

They just cannot believe their good fortune!

The_Boss

Pressure needs to be put on the CRAs to be more transparent about these scores and explain why they are not the be all and end all in lending decisons and that lenders use their own scoring criteria. Suprises me that Martin Lewis has not done this already - the article on MSE falls woefully short.

YorkshireBoy

The_Boss wrote: »

Suprises me that Martin Lewis has not done this already - the article on MSE falls woefully short.

It doesn't surprise me.

If you read the article the Experian link has an asterisk after it.

An asterisk means MSE gets paid for a click though to the CreditExpert site.

This means he has to be careful what he says.

Buzby

But surely by 'transparency' you mean full disclosure? What retailer of a product or service, with the exception of Ratner's, is going to say that the service they sell is not really needed and the customer's money would be better placed on booze, fags or gambling?

A CRA should only be used to seek out what they thnk they 'know' about you (so you can fix what may be detrimental, whilst laughing at the omissions and errors).

You-kip

YorkshireBoy wrote: »

It doesn't surprise me.

If you read the article the Experian link has an asterisk after it.

An asterisk means MSE gets paid for a click though to the CreditExpert site.

This means he has to be careful what he says.

Excellent,Martin Lewis get paid aswell as Experian while the consumer gets ripped off with a misleading product.

And we thought Mr Lewis was the moneysaving expert.

bigadaj

Well he's getting the money after all, so all good from his moneysaving perspective.

Though maybe its moneysupermarket that get it now?

Thrugelmir

The_Boss wrote: »

Pressure needs to be put on the CRAs to be more transparent about these scores and explain why they are not the be all and end all in lending decisons and that lenders use their own scoring criteria. Suprises me that Martin Lewis has not done this already - the article on MSE falls woefully short.

The CRA's sell the banks detailed data sets thats how they make their money. That each lender then processes the data sets through complex algorithms to screen applicants. I am not using the word "score" as that is too simplistic. As there can be various triggers to decline an application based on CCJ's, DMP's, number of defaults, level of current outstanding debt, late payments, etc, etc.

zerog

I think it's time everyone should be entitled to a free credit report from all CRAs every 6 months. Credit reports are free in the US and Australia, not sure how often you can get one though. The banks can pay for it, if they don't want to, they are free not to credit check people.