Why God, why?

fermi

RedDwarf82 wrote: »

- You complain to the FCA, giving them a copy of all the emails interchanged with Experian, just to receive a letter telling you that you need to contact Experian first (the emails clearly show you already did).

Do you mean the FOS?

If so, and it's been more than 8 weeks since your initial complaint to Experian/or you have a final response from Experian, then keep up at the FOS to take your complaint forward.

EDIT: See next post though

fermi

RedDwarf82 wrote: »

- You spend the next 30 days complaining to Experian until your free trial expires. It's useless.

Just realised and been reminded on re-reading above, that you don't need to keep on subscribing to dispute report info with the CRAs. The CRA is obliged to help you correct it and deal with any complaint about something wrong with the previous report or current info regardless.

Experian_company_representative

Hi RedDwarf82,

I'm sorry to read that you were not able to get the issue with your address format resolved during your free trial.

We will always query information that you think is recorded incorrectly on your report for you free of charge, even after a trial has ended.

I can take a look at your report for you to see what may be causing the issue, please [EMAIL="uksocialsupport@experian.com"]email [/EMAIL] your details (name, date of birth and address) to me so that I can investigate.

It is always the lenders decision as to whether they accept an application or not, but your full and correct information should be showing on your Experian report.

Kind regards
Neil

tain

Malcnascar wrote: »

OP do you regularly get turned down for credit? Or, is this a one off which has miffed you because you have "perfect credit". I use credit cards but never pay interest, other than the commission the retailer pays, to the credit card card companies I may be regarded as a poor customer, I wouldn't be surprised if most regarded me as a cost to them and not worth offering me their services.

That's not accurate. No other lender has any right to know if you ever paid interest or not, only if it was negative. That's personal between you and the bank, and breaches data protection laws if shared elsewhere.


If you're a perfect borrower, then all they'll see is that you're perfect. At the very least, it means they'll always get their money back. And in some instances, lots more if for large sums or a loan. So they're happy to take a 'risk' on you, as there is almost no risk to take. It's not all about interest on credit cards being paid.

mcpitman

tain wrote: »

I wouldn't call this way of doing business as illogical, so to speak. When handling hundreds of thousands (or millions) of applications, you simply have to generalise and write algorithms to suit. People are paid tons creating these algorithms (is this [similar to] what an actuary does?). It wouldn't make sense giving this information away, otherwise anyone can just copy it and make the same profit as the bank.
Often they use scorecards provided by major players in the market designed with the criteria of the lender, you will never find out the content and/or detail of decision based algorithms, not many employees of the financial institution will be aware of the inside out workings either (less than 1% of staff employed will know the exact details of calculations typically)

However there could be a few simple flags put in place to make things easier, and I think any bank could be at an advantage by implementing them.
What you consider simple, in reality often isn't...

For instance, prior to someone failing a credit check they could flag to them that because they're not on the electoral register, they will be declined. Or because their address is registered as bad, can they confirm how long they've lived there and any information on previous tenants they may have lived with.
Electoral roll data is often provided by the credit bureau the lender uses, so in this scenario not possible. In addition there is no such thing as "bad adressess", your credit history relates to you as a solely identifiable person.

I'd certainly bank with someone who had the kindness to say 'you won't get this overdraft because you've only been in your job 3 months. Wait 6 months, and all going well, you should be accepted'.
Admittedly this could be flagged at application stage, but again if openly flagged it would encourage fraudulent applications

Hope the above helps.

pvt

Malcnascar wrote: »

I use credit cards but never pay interest, other than the commission the retailer pays, to the credit card card companies I may be regarded as a poor customer, I wouldn't be surprised if most regarded me as a cost to them and not worth offering me their services.

You would be regarded as very far from being a poor customer. They make a turn of a couple of percent on every transaction you make on your card.

I spend about £30,000 p.a. on credit cards and never pay a bean in interest - I suspect my CC providers very much welcome the £500+ they're collecting off retailers through my business; so much so that they bung me a chunk of it as a backhander to entice me to spend even more.

JimmyTheWig

tain wrote: »

...as these guys have said, and because they certainly don't want to be telling everyone the criteria they're using to assess people on. Sure fire way of getting fraudulent applications.


And it's their intellectual property which they've spent a lot of money developing.

The OP isn't asking for the reasons for the decline. They're asking for the data that gave them the decline.

tain

JimmyTheWig wrote: »

The OP isn't asking for the reasons for the decline. They're asking for the data that gave them the decline.

Isn't that the same thing? If you're not isolating the data, then you can just look at any old credit report from a credit agency and check it for integrity. That's all they're doing anyway.

tain

mcpitman wrote: »

Hope the above helps.

I don't think it's as complicated and difficult as you've said though. Considering the technicalities that they've already overcome in assigning an algorithm to calculate these in the first place, more could be done. But it's easier not to.


I understand that in most cases, it's not a single thing that is causing the decline. But in others it could be a single point that edges them over, and often could be something they could change.


Although some things certainly will encourage fraud, many of them won't. Saying 'apply in 6 months time' is one that I can't see being fraud - the very notion of it can be measured, and the integrity of the initial claim is already at risk of fraud without the added line of 'you'll be ok in 6 months'.

JimmyTheWig

tain wrote: »

Isn't that the same thing? If you're not isolating the data, then you can just look at any old credit report from a credit agency and check it for integrity. That's all they're doing anyway.

The three agencies all hold slightly different versions of the truth. It's hard to be sure what they've got from who. So sometimes you'd need to go to all three.
Sometimes mistakes happen. What if the CRA sent the wrong info? Or the bank applied someone else's info to your application?
What if the CRA has updated its info since they sent it to the bank in question?

And why should you have to go to (and pay) third party agencies to see what a bank knows about you? It would seem more appropriate for the bank to tell you.