Credit Reports ..worthwhile?

Neederwedge

hi,
i've just been told by the 'finance' guy at a car dealers that there's no point to credit reports when i told him about my experian report showing me as "good". He said he has lots of experience in having people being turned down for finance when their reports are good or even excellent so I asked what was the point of them. he said there wasnt any. :mad:

i haven't owed anyone anything since paying all my debts a year ago not borrowing a penny and managing my finances well. apparently my experian report is good with a few negatives eg not being on the electoral roll having recently moved and forgot to do so will do that asap, 2 missed payments from a year ago which were the residue from 2 credit cards after i settled my bill - something like a fiver which i paid a month later when they text me following house move and a lot of searches - which has come from my letting agency recently. I dont know why they needed to so many??!!

anyway, there's more than one issue here, sorry but just wanted to know if there is any point signing up to Experian if lenders are seeing something i cant?

cheers

happy_bunny_2

The rating and number they give you are meaningless, every lender has their own criteria.

Worth checking every now and then for late payments, defaults etc, as some may may be incorrectly logged.

Can do this with the £2 statutory report. No need for a monthly subscription. Check Noddle for free.

You should fix the electoral role issue, that can be seen as not good by lenders.

YorkshireBoy

Your Experian credit report is not "good" if you're not on the ER and have 2 missed payments. That should tell you all you need to know about the worth of an Experian 'word' and/or 'number' (if you've paid for these...over and above the £2 for a statutory report?).


Re the letting agent searches, these will be unrecorded ID enquiries so have no impact on your credit rating (due to a high number of searches). They only search public records, such as ER status, bankruptcy, CCJs, etc, and do not look at individual account history. Maybe the reason there were so many is they were having trouble identifying you...maybe you have a lack of ER traceability and/or many recent addresses?


The lenders see exactly the same raw data you can see when obtaining your £2 statutory report. However, some may also take a risk score (and other analysis) from Experian, but this is not the same 'score' Experian will sell you.

StuC75

Don't confuse the semi meaningless Credit Score they sell with the fact based Credit Report..

All lenders will perform there own scoring based on your facts - with information the credit reference don't track - eg Salary & time in employment..

Since you've had missed payments, and no use of credit since then that's quite a negative on report as it doesn't demonstrate clean running of an account...