Are credit reference agencies government regulated?

meer53

Oh dear. Wonder if Agarnett is related to HPuse ?

Off to click the ignore button

Thinking Wikipedia has valid information has done it for me. Calling people "baby", well, that just makes me want to throw up. What a dimwit.

supermassive

...Anyway...

I think the assumption that large companies (lenders) don't make mistakes, and making it so bloody difficult to correct mistakes (how do I prove something didn't happen?!) is a huge fault in their operations. Especially as they're relied upon to provide correct, accurate information to companies that decide whether a person can have a mortgage/car/insurance/phone etc etc etc.

I think we're all too aware of the mistakes many large companies can make.

I have never had any debt. I do not get credit on things, really. I was raised as 'buy what you can afford and if you cant afford it, save and wait' not as some of the people that have honest bad marks against them on their file.

I never received any correspondence from 3 after returning the dongle and cancelling. The first I knew of it was a letter from Moorcroft, and then they must've sold it to Lowell.

My frustration comes from being told, after months of fighting, that the default will be removed from my file "within 50 days" and here we are 60 days later and it's still there. I'm still unable to get my mortgage that I otherwise wouldn't have been declined.

If they'd checked when they were told it defaulted, that it was legitimate, then something might have come up when 3/moorcroft/lowell went searching for my file. As it stands now, they didn't ask for any proof of the credit agreement in the first place.

What's to stop staff at these companies completely fabricating things to put on the credit file of someone they don't like?

agarnett

meer53 wrote: »

Oh dear. Wonder if Agarnett is related to HPuse ?

Off to click the ignore button

Thinking Wikipedia has valid information has done it for me. Calling people "baby", well, that just makes me want to throw up. What a dimwit.

Gawd, what makes so many long term promoted a few times bank employees so ignorant yet so clustered as arrogant schmucks?

Yes anyway, back to the main question. Supermassive makes some good points. CRAs are not at all effectively government regulated. Banking is said to be government regulated and a huge amount of FCA resource is employed to try to keep it on the straight and narrow, yet look at the state of that. CRAs operate in the shade of lending operations.

The biggest complaint about CRAs is that the information they maintain is so often found to be inaccurate causing unexpected great hardship to too many ordinary people, and often CRAs are deliberately used by their information providing partners as a spiteful or at least careless dump for the loose ends of contracts that have been mismanaged. Items bought on credit which have been returned quickly as not of merchantable quality or simply not as described have so often caused individuals enormous problems months and years afterwards. And there is no-one who steps in and takes a view and immediately kills the bad data ab initio in such circumstances. The benefit of the doubt is always given to the careless provider until it is proven otherwise. This is simply wrong. The benefit of the doubt and burden of proof should be applied in the opposite direction.

There is also the complaint that CRAs also get used to maintain irrelevant data by those who have greed and something bordering on extortion aforethought. The Erudio Student Loans furore looks like it has become one such example.

These two criticisms alone amply demonstrate that CRAs are not fit for the purposes claimed by meer53, Thrugelmir and sundry others who it seems believe that all is fair in love and the moneylending game. You don't like it? Then lump it or leave it is their mantra. And they dare to say it won't be changed.

Well I would say that bad things like this can always be changed. Look at the numerous ugly boils of the other moneylending scandals that have now been lanced - endowment mis-selling for example, (as part of mortgage-lending), PPI which trundles on into billions and billions of compensation, ID Theft insurances, which was dubiously sold as a fix for something that is largely a disease created by the vulnerabilities CRAs themselves have given our personal data. Then there is the Wonga scandal. There were also far too many on MSE trying to deflect criticisms of Wonga, but luckily Martin formed a strong view on it quite early on and wasn't prepared to remain silent on it. One always wonders about Wonga and other PayDay loan companies relationships with CRAs. In front of Parliamentary Select Committees they were arguing for more access to CRA data. Are we to believe that they had no access up to that point?

CRAs have achieved essentially unrestricted automated access to our data, so naturally the cleverest fraudsters and the cleverest moneylenders too constantly try to use them as a gateway. And there are many examples of where they have succeeded - some in notorious heists which CRAs and banks and others are always reluctant to say too much about, even in front of Parliamentary Select Commitees.

How could some CRAs have become so big that the biggest banks and even governments call them their "partners"? Yet they remain essentially totally outside any potent regulation. I remember when Equifax had a dinky office in South Croydon just down the road from upstart insurers Directline. Their name didn't surface very often in those days. Few knew much about them. My employer was a major in financial services yet they had no business with us, certainly not at regional level. How did they get so big?

They claim to be neutral repositories yet they will take data from anywhere they can get it. They do of course broke the data collections they obtain and must obviously process personal data contrary to their repeated assertions otherwise when they assert rather comically that they are not the data controllers - their moneylending partners are that, but they are not! So they then claim accuracy is not part of their brief.

In answer to supermassives's final question, the answer is that there is nothing potent to stop information providers being bloody-minded at the moment and putting false data on CRA files. In the same way as there is apparently nothing to stop a cold caller who doesn't like short shrift threatening my octogenerian Dad or yours that the caller knows where he lives.

In countries where the biggest CRAs have yet to have achieved major inroads, they are out there nevertheless creating ever more robust footholds with headline invitations to businesses to "Send us your customer data, and we'll tell you what we have on them". I paraphrase of course with the benefit or disadvantage of Google Translate depending on your view of the validity of what you are told on the internet!

But to suggest that Wikipedia is "unreliable" and to pluck it out and leave it laying in the gutter as if Wikipedia is a mere toy for wayward children, shows breathtaking ignorance of how real knowledge has been shared and assimilated over eons, of how Wikipedia itself has developed, and an implicit total inability or at least any motivation to sort wheat from chaff.

That is a very serious deficiency to admit as a moneylender, and it shows just how essential it is that we bring more regulation to bear on the sector to keep customers safe from ignorance, bloody-mindedness and outright carelessness with their data.

If you agree, then you could perhaps do good by spending a few moments to suggest a campaign initiative, perhaps a total review of Credit Reference Agency operations and regulation in the UKon the 38 Degrees website. I have.

supermassive

What I'm trying to establish is if there's a crime being committed, also.

I didn't give the credit reference agencies any permission to hold my information or distribute it, and if I did, I'd like to take that right away from them.

Surely I can do this, right? haha

Thrugelmir

supermassive wrote: »

I didn't give the credit reference agencies any permission to hold my information or distribute it, and if I did, I'd like to take that right away from them.

You would have given permission done when procuring the goods or services.

agarnett

supermassive wrote:

What I'm trying to establish is if there's a crime being committed, also.

Yes let's look at that fraud offence you linked to quite some posts ago:

Fraud by false representation (Section 2)
The defendant:

• made a false representation
• dishonestly
• knowing that the representation was or might be untrue or misleading
• with intent to make a gain for himself or another, to cause loss to another or to expose another to risk of loss.

The offence is entirely focused on the conduct of the defendant.

I think the requirement to show that a criminal offence has taken place requires all the features marked in red to be present.

First, a false representation is a matter of fact. It is the trigger, or we wouldn't be complaining about inaccurate data.

So that's a given and it is the remaining three we have to demonstrate.

The third and fourth are obvious. CRAs admit to not checking all data, not even for consistency with data they already hold on an individual.

So that leaves the requirement for there to have been dishonesty.

The legal definition of Dishonesty is helpfully prefaced by some kind contributors to the Wikipedia article on Dishonesty as follows:

Dishonesty is to act without honesty. It is used to describe a lack of probity, cheating, lying or being deliberately deceptive or a lack in integrity, knavishness, perfidiosity, corruption or treacherousness. Dishonesty is the fundamental component of a majority of offences relating to the acquisition, conversion and disposal of property (tangible or intangible) defined in criminal law such as fraud.

It then goes on to offer a short thesis on the English Law definition of Dishonesty, and on the definition within the Theft Act 1968.

No doubt CRAs might weave a defense around the concept of the personal data as property and that they believed they had a right to appropriate it in the form that they kept it, or something equally or more obtuse!

supermassive

Thrugelmir wrote: »

You would have given permission done when procuring the goods or services.

... but do I have the right to withdraw permission?

PaulW922

supermassive wrote: »

... but do I have the right to withdraw permission?

Yes you do but any credit products you have that are reporting or which have the right to report would need to be settled. Additionally, you could not make that retrospective - in other words anything already recorded would stay, because you agreed to it at the time (when entering into the agreement). So you would need to close and settle all your credit cards, bank account, loans etc. The contract between you and the lender/provider allows for reporting so you need to end the contract.

Some of the other data held is either public record or open source. For example, CCJ data is available to view from the court service for a fee so the CRAs can provide that data without your consent. They can also hold certain electoral roll data subject to the requirements of the closed entry system.

usefulmale

Thrugelmir wrote: »

You would have given permission done when procuring the goods or services.

Permission may have been given for the providers of the goods or service to pass information to the CRA's.

No permission has been given to the CRAs to process / hold / pass that information on.

supermassive

usefulmale wrote: »

Permission may have been given for the providers of the goods or service to pass information to the CRA's.

No permission has been given to the CRAs to process / hold / pass that information on.

This is what I'm trying to establish. I've had no contact with a CRA to pass my information on. Why would I?

I'm attempting to put together some sort of basis for a case which I will present to my solicitor in order to take the CRA's to court.

Obviously they have more money than I do, and thus they'll likely worm their way out of it... which is why I'm trying to prepare for a solicitor as they'll be wary of taking on such a case.

In terms of data protection and FSA, I've worked under the FSA in previous roles and signed the DPA as part of my contract with the DWP, so I guess I know a little about them. Sort of.

It's probably a numbers game, though. If more people come forward once I start proceedings, and add their case to my side against the CRAs, perhaps something will get done, at long last.

I'm probably dreaming and will just end up with massive legal bills.