Someone elses credit file

sixtyfoothigh

Hi,

Apologies if this is the wrong forum to ask this... it seemed like the most appropriate (happy for it to be moved if needed).

My ex-husband moved out in 2008 and we divorced in 2011. We are no longer in contact and I wouldn't even know how to go about getting in touch. All I know is that he lives in Manchester (he's not on Facebook, or anything like that).

Recently I started getting letters addressed to him, which for the first 5 or 6 I sent back unopened as "return to sender". I could tell it was the same sender each time. This week another one arrived and I have to admit I was fed up... so I opened it. It was from a company called Lowell. And part of it says:

We have recently obtained a copy of your credit file to assist us in identifying your current residence. Your credit file shows us that you are currently making payments to another creditor, such as a bank, credit card, or mobile phone provider from this address and therefore we are writing to you asking you to repay the money that you owe.

So I rang Lowell to say he didn't live there and they were quite rude and said that his credit report said he did and they wouldn't remove this address from their records. They said there was "nothing they could do" and maybe I should contact "someone like Experian" to see if I could get them to remove the association between him and my address.

I distinctly got the impression that I was being fobbed off, and almost that they were trying to make it my problem to get hold of my ex (i.e. if I could give them his current address they would stop hassling me).

Does anyone know if there's anything I can do. We had a very acrimonious break-up, so it's quite upsetting getting these letters after such a long time.

Sixty x

Pay_me

You can ask the Credit Reference Agencies (Experian, Equifax and Callcredit are the main ones in the UK) to break the association. As an example with Experian you have to fill out a financial disassociation questionnaire.

I had to do it a few years ago after I split from a partner.

sixtyfoothigh

Thanks for that. Earlier today I signed up for a free month from Experian - and it said I had no financial associations on there. My ex-husband and I had no joint accounts when we were together - he was (and it sounds like still is) a financial disaster. So I don't think it was a financial association thing.

They way the Lowell representative described it, I needed to ask them to change my ex's credit file so that he wasn't associated with this address. This sounded fishy... as surely they won't let me update someone elses credit file?

Sixty x

Pay_me

As far as I am aware you can't change another persons file. My advice would be to check all Credit Reference Agencies (CRA). If you have tried Experian also check Equifax and Callcredit.

CRAs will only hold the information reported to them and some companies do not report information to all CRAs so they can hold different information.

You can get the others files for free on clearscore and noddle

sixtyfoothigh

Thank you - really helpful... clearscore shows a financial association with my ex. I will see if I can get that corrected! Noddle is currently not letting me sign up - it keeps saying "oops, unexpected error". I'll try again in a couple of days.

Sixty x

TheGardener

I've got a similar problem and each of the CRA (Experian, Equifax and call credit) all have a 'disassociation' form you fill in - it does ask for the ex's current address - which I can't supply but I've filled the forms in with what I can and submitted them - not sure what they'll do but at least I've made a start.



https://www.experian.com/uk/online-dissassociation-form.html

http://www.callcredit.co.uk/media/53054/disassociation form.pdf

https://equifaxuk.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/120/kw/association