CRAs serve no good purpose. Their databases should be destroyed.

tberry6686

GingerBob wrote: »

I seem to recall having a credit card (Access card) before the CRAs existed - I think so, anyway.

I'm not saying that you didn't just that relatively speaking they were quite rare.

meer53

If you have so much experience in financial matters, maybe it would have been a good idea for you to help your parents before now ? It's been common knowledge for a few years that cheques are on the way out, debit cards have been around since 1987. My mother in law died aged 94 last year, even she had a debit and credit card and used an ATM, i've worked in banking for 25 years and felt it was prudent to make sure she knew what to do with them. It's no good blaming the CRA's for your parents not moving with the times.

agarnett

Died in the wool bank staff.

Forgive them Lord, for they know not what they do half the time, and could care less the other half.


Anyway, back to the main theme of the uselessness and dangers inherent in propounding the UK's love affair with CRAs:

Today my internet-less aged parents received an Experian Alert via email.

If they knew what email was all about AND they knew how to view it on their mobile phone then of course we couldn't say they were strictly internet-less could we? However, it is generally accepted that less than 1/3rd of those age 75+ are connected at home.

OK so the rest of our most senior citizens may be clueless with regard to the technological revolutions of the last two decades, other than one or two medical ones of course! They are clueless to common trickery devised in the last two decades to take advantage of the technological revolutions which into which they have been involuntarily sucked. So they know about being wary of strangers knocking at the door, but they are unaware that businesses like Thrugelmir's take shortcuts with "know your customer" and in fact couldn't give a toss who is buying their cheap trousers on appo from a classified ad in the Daily Express because as a "business" (any old business will do) they have purchased the power from a CRA to play God, dreamed up a non-existent credit agreement that fits the CRA's definition of "mail order credit" even though no-one asked for credit, and hey presto, they gaily and daily slap black marks over pensioners credit files for those who are a bit slow on the uptake.

Of course many of the smart Alecs on these forums smirk at the ridiculousness of those who are not connected or whose hands are not being held by dominant offspring towards financial and technological righteousness.

To them I say, you should be ashamed, both at your blinkered, and at your unkind view of those who share our pale blue dot.

88% of pensioners in the UK record their religious affiliation as Christian. 8% are recorded as of no religion. Can we please be a bit more Christian in outlook when considering their plight such that they might maintain their faith in human kindness at least? Many come to this particular forum complain about CRAs, but most of the elderly cannot. The treatment some of our senior citizens receive at the hands of CRAs and profiteers goes endured silently and despairingly. This must stop.


So what was this credit file alert my parents received from Experian today which they were being urged to log in and check out?

Turns out it was the credit search by the bank ten days ago ... remember that? The one that resulted in the bank saying no new debit card, you'll have to subscribe to Experian, Equifax or Callcredit to find out why?

And what did we do? Yep we immediately set about subscribing and the Experian account was set up 9 days ago. I activated it on 31st with the PIN code and saw everything including the bank search and two by Experian itself. And they know we logged in and saw it.

But today we needed to urgently log in to see what they know we already saw?

Useless bloody "service" - for a potential £14.99 per month before I knock it on the head out of its misery, you'd have thought something a bit more instant was proper. Afterall, they give instant access to our personal data to any other party who pays ...

Nope, the UK CRA system is a big wrong. It doesn't have to be this way. Those who blandly say it does without making any suggestion for reform whatsoever are very obviously blinkered. With some horses blinkers are necessary to keep them focused on winning the race. With the best good natured favorites not so edgy with the world and jumpy in their own skin, blinkers aren't necessary either for high performance, or for being safely presented to owners and punters in the paddock.

tberry6686

Died in the wool bank staff.

. If you are referring to all the people who have responded to this thread who disagree with you then you could not be more wrong. Personally I have never worked in the financial sector or a bank, CRA, or any other industry with anything but a normal business relationship with financial entities.

Nope, the UK CRA system is a big wrong. It doesn't have to be this way. Those who blandly say it does without making any suggestion for reform whatsoever are very obviously blinkered

And your suggestion for reform/another way of working consists of destroy the databases ? So in one move you would make it difficult to get a motgage, credit card, overdraft, bank account etc and think that it would be a good move ?

takman

agarnett - You are ranting and raving at how useless CRA are and how their information is rubbish and that they are useless. But from what you are saying it sounds like all the information they have on your parents is actually correct. They have obviously bought something from an advert and paid late and that is their own fault.

My Grandmother who is over 90 years old has a Debit Card and manages her banking by Telephone. So your parents could have ordered their credit report by Telephone themselves instead of you having to sign up to a 30 day free trial online which they have no access to. I don't see why it was so urgent that you couldn't wait 7 days for a statutory report.

agarnett

tberry6686 wrote: »

. If you are referring to all the people who have responded to this thread who disagree with you then you could not be more wrong. Personally I have never worked in the financial sector or a bank, CRA, or any other industry with anything but a normal business relationship with financial entities.

Nope tberry, I was referring to died in the wool bank staff, of which you clearly are not, but some are

And your suggestion for reform/another way of working consists of destroy the databases ? So in one move you would make it difficult to get a motgage, credit card, overdraft, bank account etc and think that it would be a good move ?

Yes that is my suggestion, replaced by a much more slimline and government controlled bad boys and girls database. Private databases should be destroýed because quite simply put, they are self-evidently tainted with far too much corrupted data and irrelevant data, and they are also sadly being regularly used for corrupt purposes not least by organised criminals.

I am not making it difficult to get a mortgage. You can get a mortgage in enlightened and far more socially adept parts of Europe somewhat more easily than in the UK that surprise surprise have a system built along the lines I have suggested are the proper lines. Access to basic banking is governed by EU directives so that's no more difficult either, and as for credit cards, well that is in the UK, a somewhat unique market following the American model. I still have aggregate credit limits on UK credit cards which are bigger than any mortgage I'd ever qualify for with my own "credit score"(sic) of 999 and 40 page long spotless file.

You want such "ease" to be propounded ad infinitum, or maybe reeled in just a bit ... for our own good maybe ... you know what I think ... what do you reckon?

takman, forgive me, but you are putting a blinkered case if you have to qualify it with the prefix "I don't see why ... "

My parents chose not to have Telephone Banking formally set up. All telephone dealing on anything is dangerous for citizens who do not understand how personal data is collected by criminals, combined, and then used to hijack and to confidence trick. I do know. My parents know there is a danger but cannot quantify it. They took a decision to protect themselves with face to face access only. That was their quite proper and well-reasoned decision.

Age is not the only common factor I am taking about with regard to our senior citizens, and I accept that some will have enjoyed mentally challenging careers and whether they are or are not part of the 32% of over 75s on the internet, they may still be sharp enough at 90 for a few more years. But you cannot always use your own close to home example as the measure of right and wrong and whether harm is being done more generally. As you get older like me, you naturally mix with many sets of older people who are directly challenged by either their own or their elderly parents' needs. My generation (baby boomers) are perhaps the best place to bang on about it and how it is an area of our society that is being neglected by corporate interests. Unfortunately, as I am sure you might possibly agree, my generation has also been largely responsible in the name of profit and greed for creating the neglectful systems we endure.

I am trying to right a wrong here.

[Deleted User]

Not sure where the 'died in the wool bank staff' are, or even what relevance that holds.

With all due respect OP, you sound like you've taken your own experience with your parents to heart and are now on some sort of personal rampage that doesn't really have anything to do with reality.

meer53

OP, your ranting isn't going to change anything. CRA's are neither useless nor dangerous.

As you haven't responded to my comment about helping your parents before now, i'll assume you agree, personally i feel it is you who should be ashamed at your blinkered and unkind view.

molerat

agarnett wrote: »

....... Yes that is my suggestion, replaced by a much more slimline and government controlled bad boys and girls database. Private databases should be destroýed because quite simply put, they are self-evidently tainted with far too much corrupted data and irrelevant data, and they are also sadly being regularly used for corrupt purposes not least by organised criminals ..........

Of course the government have an excellent record in maintaining accurate and reliable database / IT systems :rotfl:

agarnett

[Deleted User] wrote:

Not sure where the 'died in the wool bank staff' are, or even what relevance that holds.

With all due respect OP, you sound like you've taken your own experience with your parents to heart and are now on some sort of personal rampage that doesn't really have anything to do with reality.

You say that based upon your own concept of reality.

What if mine is wide and representative of a silent majority and is not simply based upon my own parents' experience? Do you want to knock it for being wide and representative of those you don't usually hear from on MSE?

I could give you a list as long as my arm of bad things caused by the UK CRA system, many of which are unbelievably bad, such as the security hole at one of the CRAs a few years ago. It was a hushed up fact that cost me and goodness knows how many hundreds of others a lot of time to sort, and two of my banks a straight eight thousand quid in less than a week on my accounts alone. That was despite me being personally on the case within 2 working days when a regularly used credit card stopped working. Unfortunately the card accounts that were maxed out were two not in regular use. Do you want me to relate the full story on that one for posterity? I am sure CallCredit would rather I didn't.

Yes, the CRA let the criminals in the front door giving them my credit report as an aide memoire to attack me! And it wasn't a one off. It was an organised exploitation of hopeless security that wasn't discovered by the CRA until months afterwards. It may have persisted longer and with the other two CRAs in some respects.

Then there was the discovery that a large bank with whom I already had more than one credit card (due to their takeover of other credit card companies) had issued a criminal who applied online, a new credit card in my name simply because the criminal used my name and address (no middle name given). They issued it despite the criminal using a completely different DoB and other made up personal data not tallying with data already held by the bank and the CRAs. They did a credit check with Experian first. And the card was of course immediately maxed out within a day or two of issue.

In my experience and judgement the banks' faulty relationships with CRAs and CRAs faulty security have directly caused enormous ID Theft fraud in the UK that would not have taken place had there been no CRA.

I have dealt with customers whose CRA records are "stuffed" through no direct fault of their own, whose identities have been hijacked, and whose banks, other data providers and the CRAs themselves play pass the parcel when things need sorting.

So No, my views are not stilted by my parents recent experience. They are merely reconfirmed by it.

dfub, I think you will find anyone with friends in high places already can be a CRA if you look closely enough. Ever heard of LexisNexis? They'll have tabs on you already. Haven't a clue what pond they crawled out of, but they're here.

molerat, what is your point? Who would you rather trust to hold accurate personal data? A CRA or the government? A CRA? Really? At least if the government ever held bad irrelevant data in the normal course you can easily contact them and expect it to be fixed as a simple two party (you and them) transaction. Try that with a CRA. I must admit I don't quite understand the inconsistency of your help for heroes sig and your deliberate derailment when we are discussing the fate of some of the oldest surviving heroes.


I suppose if you fold your own argument in on itself you could consider what GCHQ has on us all already in its databases, relevant or otherwise, via Google or Echelon, but hopefully they don't let Experian anywhere near it! They probably do however, and that's the folly of a system built on capitalism gone made where combined edifices of personal data are more important as a corporate asset to maintain at all costs than to keep private or to maintain in a proper state of repair.

meer53, you have adopted a ridiculous personally insulting tone which deserves reporting but I can't really be Rsd. My parents have always been proudly independent and my aim is to facilitate that as long as possible. They could both still smash your blinkered died in the wool bank staff arguments for six any day from the comfort of their armchairs should they ever get you on the phone spouting such acerbic tosh.

Neither parent had the benefit of any higher education or any highfalutin career, but they are more creditworthy than you will ever be and more importantly they know right from wrong. It is totally wrong that their 60 year banking relationship is terminally prejudiced by a short term £14.99 mistakenly outstanding 2 month mail order debt which we haven't even established was properly recorded or even properly incurred. For every day in the last 10 years or maybe even 20 they could write a cheque for 1000 times that without blinking and they have always religiously paid bills as they go. Other than a £3000 mortgage that ended 20 years ago they have never needed nor wanted to apply for any credit for anything and they don't believe they ever have either. So where is the credit agreement relied upon to slap black marks on their CRA file?

£14.99 owed for max 2 months and by the end of month 3 months ago, it was settled anyway. How can it even be right for anyone to place an entry on a database for a debt of that size that was outstanding for just a month (that's when the first black mark appeared) and for that black mark to irretrievably prejudice certain services at their bank? Answer that properly if any of you can.

After making a management decision, the bank actually told me yesterday that they could not disregard the information or "take a view". The poor bank staff who had the task of bearing the bad news couldn't quite believe it either. Their processes are irrevocably wed to the CRA database. The board of directors at the bank has clearly failed to recognise how ridiculous their card issuing credit check process has become. Management at the banks said the only way to recover my parents' computer recorded status at the bank was to contact the sole trader who marked their CRA file and plead with the trader to remove the entry! Can you honestly believe they said that?

And similarly, First Direct bank staff do First Direct no favours by being here on MSE all over threads like mine like some rash, and posting such careless twaddle about what valued bank customers like my parents should and should not do. You are basically confirming that you haven't a clue how to recognise them as valued customers either without first converting them into some sort of non-independent third party managed entity! That might be how you treat elders of your acquaintance, but I don't think it is very British to suggest to a pair of fully cognizant WW2 veterans that they are no longer capable of wiping their own bumz just yet! Aren't you ashamed your industry hasn't a better answer than to tell the family to take control to enable the bank to avoid the special problems of dealing with senior citizens directly?

First Direct and indeed all the banks need to think very carefully about providing adequate service to a rapidly growing elderly population, and somehow I don't think you are quite cut out for it, are you? And are they? I wonder.

Meantime, destroy all CRA databases. They confuse meer53 and computer-controlled lenders and banks generally into not recognising what a good customer really is. Babies are constantly and needlessly being tipped out with bathwater by their computers, but they cant see it. The banks need help. Someone should take control of their business and put it on the right rails.

Embarrassing and shameful that they haven't already done anywhere near enough about it, isn't it meer53?