Think the Credit Agencies are unfair?

Peachy_Keen

Hi there
I have recently tried to keep on top of the information the credit agencies have on me and have found that despite paying off £15k's worth of credit card debt in July this year (:T), between the banks themselves (the debt providers) and the credit file people, my records have not been updated in 3 whole months, despite me chasing both the agencies and the providers. I am SICK of this and frankly am still angry that these private unregulated companies can provide other companies information that I have to PAY to access and have to do all the work chasing and following up, to ensure the information is even up to date let alone accurate.

I have started a gov petition to ask the government to regulate this - our information should be updated on a daily basis - this is the age of information - why should information that can be seriously damaging to our financial lives be so slowly updated? Also they can charge you up to £15 a month to access the files (that are your OWN files, can you imagine doing that for your physical health records, for example?!) with an additional £5 for a 'credit score' ! It's insane :mad: !

I have started an e-petition - please contact me and I will send you the url you can sign - we need 10k signatures before Jan 2015 - can't post it here, I'm told (boo)

Please let me know if you've had any mental headaches trying to get the information they hold straight! Thanks S

Peachy_Keen

Hi there - but not well enough so I want to get them to update their details asap and not to charge consumers!

InsideInsurance

They are also covered by the Data Protection Act and so covered by the Information Commissioners Office (ICO)

You need to be realistic, this is the digital age but we are also talking about banks who run archaic computer systems. We have seen how fragile they are and prone to falling over in recent years with relatively minor updates. Imagine the stress imposed of going from a monthly to daily extract of data?

Having run similar extracts etc from insurance systems there is also often lots of exceptions thrown by the systems which require manual intervention to get back into reports etc. Again not practical to do on a daily basis.

I will not claim to know the backend process for the CRAs but it has always seemed it takes them about a week to fully assimilate the information they receive. As far as I know there is no primary key shared between financial institutes and CRAs and so each individual update has to go through a fuzzy logic matching process which will inevitably have massive overheads.

Hazzinho

If you are planning for a big loan or mortgage plan ahead and check your files. It's credit history not present, so clear balance a few months prior. If you're not applying for credit what's the problem in waiting? They are limited by the banks providing data once a month.

I personally think it's a good system that rewards people that manage their money well, my only gripe is utilities reporting to them. I got caught out in the past as I wasn't on the electoral roll, if you get clued up you'll be fine. Get the £2 reports a few months before applying and get noddle for free.

Also they are FCA regulated so your argument is flawed.

Archi_Bald

I would support a petition that asks for a current account licence that everybody would have to acquire before they are allowed to open a current account. Passing a test with a number of questions, some of them relating to the credit history, should be made mandatory. It should also be mandatory to renew the licence every 10 years at the latest by passing a then current test. People should be fined for not possessing a current account licence. Similar for credit cards, and the two licences could probably be combined.

meer53

This idea is totally unrealistic and unworkable. Good luck, but there is no way 10,000 people will sign this petition before January 2015. Or even January 2016.

matttye

I think they are unfair insofar as it can be very difficult to get inaccurate information removed from your file.

I think errors should be corrected on files immediately, but changes and updates can continue to use the monthly trickle through process that they do now.

E.g. Halifax promised to correct some errors on my credit file 55 days ago. They told me the changes would be made after no more than 28 days. Tomorrow it will have taken them twice as long as they promised and that's even if my files actually are updated tomorrow, which I doubt.

I don't need to apply for credit so the wait isn't a problem for me at the moment, but I will be wanting to apply for a mortgage at some point and such a long delay will be completely unacceptable when I need to apply.

James_B.

They are imperfect, but they do an incredibly useful and valuable job.

As we see on here, many people borrow money then fail to stick to the agreed terms. Businesses want to know who these people are, and charge them appropriately, or be able to avoid them entirely.

If it were not for the credit agencies then companies would have to charge responsible borrowers far more "just in case", or they'd had to carry out far more onerous checks themselves.

The net result would be that everyone would pay more for credit,mane companies would not be protected against the sort of people who post on here, outraged that they can't keep their defaults secret when they try to take yet another company's money.

InsideInsurance

matttye wrote: »

I think they are unfair insofar as it can be very difficult to get inaccurate information removed from your file.

So in other words you contact the CRAs saying your defaults and CCJs are all wrong, they remove them immediately, you then apply for and get a new credit card/ loan etc and then the other bank restates all of these because actually they were correct and you lied when you got them removed immediately?


The timescales are frustratingly long and its a pain getting things corrected but things have to be realistic and the correct checks and balances be built into the system.

So perhaps rather than immediate correction it would be immediately marked as disputed and then your future loan providers etc can decide how they want to factor in the flag to say you're disputing something on your file.

Obviously another option is to have more underwriters make decisions rather than computers. More provision of payslips and bank statements to prove history etc but then you have to accept slower decisions and higher interest rates to cover the higher operational overheads.

matttye

InsideInsurance wrote: »

So in other words you contact the CRAs saying your defaults and CCJs are all wrong, they remove them immediately, you then apply for and get a new credit card/ loan etc and then the other bank restates all of these because actually they were correct and you lied when you got them removed immediately?


The timescales are frustratingly long and its a pain getting things corrected but things have to be realistic and the correct checks and balances be built into the system.

So perhaps rather than immediate correction it would be immediately marked as disputed and then your future loan providers etc can decide how they want to factor in the flag to say you're disputing something on your file.

Obviously another option is to have more underwriters make decisions rather than computers. More provision of payslips and bank statements to prove history etc but then you have to accept slower decisions and higher interest rates to cover the higher operational overheads.

Sorry if I was unclear. I was referring more to the fact that even when a lender accepts the information they've reported about you is wrong and they submit an update to the CRAs, it still takes an age for things to be updated. I wasn't suggesting that information should be removed before the lender gets their say.

Halifax agreed 56 days ago that information they reported about me was inaccurate and they've agreed to remove it yet it's still on all of my credit files.

I don't see why, in this day and age, the information can't be updated immediately by the lender, but I accept that I am ignorant of how the backend systems work. Perhaps the volume of traffic between the lenders and CRAs would make this impossible.

meer53

matttye wrote: »

Sorry if I was unclear. I was referring more to the fact that even when a lender accepts the information they've reported about you is wrong and they submit an update to the CRAs, it still takes an age for things to be updated. I wasn't suggesting that information should be removed before the lender gets their say.

Halifax agreed 56 days ago that information they reported about me was inaccurate and they've agreed to remove it yet it's still on all of my credit files.

I don't see why, in this day and age, the information can't be updated immediately by the lender, but I accept that I am ignorant of how the backend systems work. Perhaps the volume of traffic between the lenders and CRAs would make this impossible.

It can be updated quickly. Depends on the lender and how soon they do their bit. I've know information to be updated within 48 hours.