Cancelling Unnecessary Direct Debits

rainbowstarfish

Hi,

I had my lbm a few days ago, have been lurking since then. Currently going through my soa.and cancelling all unnecessary direct debits. I'm paying 14.99 for experian. I don't plan on applying for any credit in the next 18 months absolute minimum, so do I need this? Or is it still a good idea to know what my score is? I signed up for noddle (free) and saw you can get noddle improve for £30 for the year. I thought it might motivate me if I saw my rating improve as things are paid off so noddle would be a fair compromise. My gut instinct is to cancel it (if I need it I can always resubscribe) but since I'm clearly not great at understanding/managing money yet, thought I'd get some advice.

Sanctioned_Parts_List

Definitely cancel Experian - it's a great way of making you pay £15pm for something you only really need 2 or 3 times per year for a cost of £2 per statutory report. It's of very little use.

Experian's "credit score" is based on their own criteria, which are not shared by any lenders. Different lenders will score you according to their own criteria. So Experian's "score" is useless - as are Noddle's and Equifax's, in the interest of fairness. There is also no correlation between subscribing to paid-for credit monitoring and successfully applying for credit.

Strummer22

No, don't pay the credit agencies any more money than you have to - which is £2 every so often to see your Experian report, if you want.

If you like looking at the 'headline numbers' then by all means look at noddle and Clearscore, as I do as well, but don't be suckered into thinking the 'credit score' is particularly important. And definitely don't get suckered into paying them anything. All info on improving your credit rating can be found for free on MSE and other websites, you don't need to pay noddle £30.

What's more, if you really are improving your credit score (making sure you're on electoral roll, building up a good history of managing credit well) then the numbers you see on noddle and Clearscore will go up. You can see them for free and get a double warm glow from saving money and improving your credit score.

Just remember... no-one else sees that score, even lenders you apply to. They all score you in their own way.

rainbowstarfish

Thanks for the info! That's it cancelled

Yes, even after I wrote the post I still couldn't justify to myself why I would NEED the noddle improve anyway. Apart from anything else, the debt is the priority, not the credit score, (although nobody wants to harm that if they can help it)! Feels so good to get another payment cancelled

greensalad

You can also use Clearscore and Noddle for free to get an overview of your credit (e.g just to see if there is anything on your file).

Getting out of Experian is another issue entirely...

foolofbeans

I had an Experian subscription and cancelled as I never used it really. I do remember some info on this site about how customers were being charged for insurance that they may not have asked for and this should not have been enforced on people. I sent an email after cancelling and got the cost of the insurance back - I think it was about £75
Well worth a look about this site to see if the same applies to you.

chelseablue

How easy is it to cancel Experian membership?


If its a real pain I might just cancel my bank card and get a new one sent out then they cant take any more money and the membership will be cancelled that way

sourcrates

chelseablue wrote: »

How easy is it to cancel Experian membership?


If its a real pain I might just cancel my bank card and get a new one sent out then they cant take any more money and the membership will be cancelled that way

That's not the best way to cancel your contract with them, all you gotta do is call them, say you want to cancel, don't fall for the sales spiel, job done.

glentoran99

chelseablue wrote: »

How easy is it to cancel Experian membership?


If its a real pain I might just cancel my bank card and get a new one sent out then they cant take any more money and the membership will be cancelled that way

That's not true, they can continue to charge your new card

87mave

sourcrates wrote: »

That's not the best way to cancel your contract with them, all you gotta do is call them, say you want to cancel, don't fall for the sales spiel, job done.

Yeah when I originally cancelled with Experian, they offered me the full service for about £7.99 instead of the £15 I had been paying. Cheek!

greensalad

It's not like it's hard it's just time consuming. You call them and they ask you so many questions trying to get you to stay. You just have to sit on the phone for maybe 15 minutes saying "NO". It's irritating.