Experian admit their "credit score" is pointless since lenders don't see it

VictimOfImpersonation

Experian_company_representative wrote: »

Please send us your details victimofimpersonation so we can investigate this for you.

Thanks.
James

I am sure you'd like that James, but you don't need to investigate this problem just for me, do you? We will let things take their course now if Experian don't wish to do even the simplest of dob cleanup exercises* for the good of all consumers on your files.

So what is likely to happen is the following and probably in this order:

1. In the next day or two, if the card provider's "suspend account" routine does not suspend CRA updates, the incorrect record will be updated with an unpaid marker or similar for the third month of the card.
2. The card provider is likely to cause a CIFAS marker to be applied to my name and address
3. CIFAS is likely at some point to update the CRA with the CIFAS marker, but it remains to be seen if that causes any retrospective check of the incident that caused the CIFAS marker.
4. The card provider is likely to update the CRA with information requiring the erroneous record to be removed.
5. The card provider is hopefully likely to liaise with the CRA to establish how a fraudulent account opening with such basicly mismatched information such as this can possibly escape the CRAs attention for the future.

Let's see how long all this takes. I will report changes as I see them.
I have done all the discovering, alerting and reporting so far James. Time for the CRAs to do some I think.
I don't believe CRAs are fit for any purpose I can use.

And this leaky security/inaccurate data thing is just making me more vulnerable to fraud than if CRA records did not exist.

* The simplest of dob clean-up exercises would for example be where you take say all consumers with greater than 10 credit accounts on their history and search for single dob mismatches. That would give you a high rate of success in finding true serious errors like mine.

I appreciate that once you get down to say 3 credit accounts only for a consumer so far e.g. for a recent graduate with one credit card, one overdraft and a phone account, no changes for last 6 months, a single mismatch is much more likely to be a typo which can be perhaps rectified with less urgency (you'd have to ask the ICO how long they'd give you, wouldn't you, if you found a lot of those?).

Maestro.

Credit scores in the UK are a complete mess because they vary between all the CRAs and don't take into account enough data to mean anything to lenders.

The American FICO score is much better. It actually means something and from what I understand is a fairly reliable method of deciding whether you'll be eligible for credit.

Sabbathdei

Agreed, the American system is something we need to adopt over here, we need a way of establishing just how credit-worthy we are instead of just "piddling in the wind" as we now with made-up numbers pretending to be credit scores. However this may lead to a kind of "credit discrimination" where people are stigmatised for having a lower score.

Eonel

Experian_company_representative wrote: »

The score we provide to the public is a guide and we make this very clear to people where the score is provided and in our Q&As. It is based on the scores we help many lenders calculate, but doesn't look at the wider range of data a lender would. It is simply designed to help you understand what your credit report might mean to a lender. I don't think that makes it pointless, but people are entitled to their opinion of course.

James

Credit where it's due, this is a fair and candid response.

James - are there plans to enhance Experian scores to ask & incorporate the wider range of data that a lender would, or are there reasons why you can not?

The_Boss

I hadn't seen this thread before but it's very interesting, especially as in their TV advertising campaigns Experian seem to be deliberately mis-selling the "scores" as something they're not by overstating their worth. Then hiding behind "it's in our terms and conditions buried away on the website where we hope nobody will see them".

Maybe one day the mis-selling of "scores" will be something to be able to claim a refun on, like those that paid for PPI that did not cover them.

Can this thread be made into a sticky?