British Gas search!

antonette254

I am in the process of switching my gas/elect over to British Gas & checked my Experian file today today to find they have done a credit search? :mad:

stclair

They state in the terms and condition a credit search with take place.

2.2 Our prices and conditions sometimes depend on how you pay. Before we enter into the contract with you, we look at any information we have. That might include what we know about how you’ve paid our bills in the past, anything you’ve told us, and any information that a licensed credit-reference agency has given us. We use all this information to decide how likely we think it is that you’ll be able to pay your bills. Our decision can affect how we ask you to pay. For example, it might affect how often we send you bills. We might also ask you to pay a deposit or use a different kind of meter.

Full T&Cs can be viewed here:

http://www.britishgas.co.uk/products-and-services/gas-and-electricity/our-energy-tariffs/standard/terms.html

antonette254

Thanks St Clair for your speedy response.
Because I did the switch through The big London Energy Switching service I have only just received the t&c's from British Gas. I know for next time though.

GingerBob_3

Note the obfuscation:


"...and any information that a licensed credit-reference agency has given us".


This translates to "we will smack you with a credit check at one or more credit reference agencies".


Unfortunately in these days of bulk financial surveillance there's not a lot you can do about this. However, it's worth knowing that British Gas are one of the worst offenders when it comes to financial snooping via the CRAs. They are best avoided.

MEM62

antonette254 wrote: »

I am in the process of switching my gas/elect over to British Gas & checked my Experian file today today to find they have done a credit search? :mad:

Do you expect them to offer you an account without checking your history of meeting financial obligations? Of course they will run a credit check on you.

Gordon_Hose

Not really sure what the issue is? Unless you're having loads of searches done it won't affect anything.

MuddyFunster

I have some background for this - I actually worked for BG in, must have been the late 90's when they first started doing credit searches and worked on the project to work out the nuts and bolts of how they did it. (badly)


BG, especially when it was a nationalised organisation had a huge problem with bad debt - people knew it was almost impossible to be cut off and because of their terrible back-office system they rarely managed to move debt / account when people moved home - people simply called up, gave any name they wishes to use and bills started arriving in that name - some people didn't pay a penny for 12 months and when they finally got serious and started talking about a pre-payment meter - they simply called up with another name.


So they started using Experian to at least attempt to confirm who they were dealing with - back then, there was no mechanism to decline to offer someone a supply for poor credit history or even insist on a pre-pay meter - but that has probably changed.


Anyway, the credit agencies are now much better and there are lots of difference categories for credit searches so there's no impact on your credit worthiness if you change suppliers.


After I left BG I went to work for RBS and spent 10 years doing amongst other things credit underwriting - the days of branding potential customers as "credit hungry" if they reach a certain number of applications in a certain time is long gone - at least for the dept I worked for - thanks to amongst other things MSE! consumers are now far more savvy and shop around for all manner of things - this can create a HUGE number of search hits - especially when people move home - 20, 30, 40 even 50 in a month and it's not a problem.