Experian charges

Dobbibill

Martin_R wrote: »

Hi Dobbibill,
Here are my answers to your questions ...

Do you have other lines of credit? Yes
Do you make minimum payments? [They may think you're over comitted] Yes
Do you pay other credit cards off in full each month? [they may think you are not profitable enough to be one of their customers] Mostly
Do you think that the lender may think you already have enough credit ratio to your income? If they do, then they must think I earn millions lol
Are you financially linked to someone else who may have missed payments? No
Do you live in an area which is a high risk for fraud? No
Have you ever been a victim of fraud? No
Have you recently changed jobs? No
Have you made any other applications for credit recently? Not in the past 3 years, all were accepted.

Hi Martin,

I didn't expect you to answer all the questions but fair play to you

I hope you can see from the variety of questions, that being rejected for credit with any lenders is not personal. They may only like people who make minimum payments and never pay off their bill in full, or vice versa.

They certainly won't base any decision on your 'credit score' from Experian, they just use the data within your report, coupled with the information provided on the application form against their criteria.

I'm glad you've decided to apply for the £2 report to check for inaccuracies rather than paying almost £15 for it. Saves you £13.....bargain

Dobbi

gropinginthedark

Deleted_User wrote: »

Experian don't 'give a negative'. They provide data about you and the lender makes a decision on that, plus anything else the lender has asked you.

It's about you not meeting the lenders criteria.

The lender in this case has no information other than that they needed to provide to Experian. Yes their criteria may include decisions based on other factors but I'm at a loss to come up with any, certainly there is quite unequivocally no credit risk - maybe they discriminate on the basis of age (I'm over 60), they could use the postcode to look up the ACORN code (but ACORN rating is very high, ABC1). But since the rejection was online and (almost) instant, and they stated that it was as a result of a credit check at Experian they must be getting a figure back from Experian that allows an algorithmic response. Therefore that figure must have negative connotations. I don't know what experian provide in response to enquiries from lenders but it must be more succinct than the full (9 page) report I have and that contains NOTHING which could lead to any possible interpretation as a credit risk. If it is the simple credit score then that's 999 out of a possible 999. I guess what you're saying is that Experian don't say good or bad but just provide that number (or some similar simple rating) and it's down to the lender to decide whether that rating is acceptable. Maybe Talk Mobile have got their algorithms wrong and think 999 is worst possible not best possible.
Another explanation might be that Talk Mobile are using their current promotion to attract enquiries, reject all applications but the rejection email offers a much more expensive alternative (PAYG which would work out at over £40 a month for 2GB of data compared with their advertised offer of £7.50). Maybe the offer was simply to get publicity and nobody can get that deal, perhaps the intent is to establish contact and then upsell.

[Deleted User]

They don't provide your credit score. It would be entirely useless as the lender doesn't know what is driving that number. They wouldn't know whether 700 means you're not on the electoral roll, or whether if it's because you have a CCJ, or 3 defaults, or have moved house 7 times.

All they get is the raw data and they interpret it. Lender A may lender to students, so will not worry about customers moving frequently. Lender B may serve the higher risk customers, so will be looking for some stability in address and electoral roll.

Some smaller lenders may provide their criteria to Experian and ask them to provide a score based on that, but no one is seeing your 999 score.

daniel86_2

The £2 credit report will tell you everything you need to know the score does not really matter as much is what state the accounts are in

you can also see call credit free using noddle and eqifax free using clear score as differnt agencies may report different accounts

gropinginthedark

Deleted_User wrote: »

They don't provide your credit score. It would be entirely useless as the lender doesn't know what is driving that number. They wouldn't know whether 700 means you're not on the electoral roll, or whether if it's because you have a CCJ, or 3 defaults, or have moved house 7 times.

All they get is the raw data and they interpret it. Lender A may lender to students, so will not worry about customers moving frequently. Lender B may serve the higher risk customers, so will be looking for some stability in address and electoral roll.

Some smaller lenders may provide their criteria to Experian and ask them to provide a score based on that, but no one is seeing your 999 score.

Yes and I've got that data from experian too. It's squeaky clean. I do understand that some lenders actually prefer higher risk customers who present the opportunity for taking high interest loans and possibly incurring late payment fees. Credit card providers aren't keen on people like me who pay off the bill by direct debit every month, they want to be able to charge massive interest rates. Here we're talking about a cheap phone SIM paid by direct debit, what reason might they have for declining a low risk customer?

daniel86_2

An application can decline for many reasons it can be as simple as you have typed your name wrong or date of birth. You can always call them and ask why your application was rejected and once you have obtained your report will have the same information they had at the time to challenge there decision, however on a separate note avoid Talk Mobile at all cost there are better deals on virgin mobile with only a 30 day contracts and better customer service

gropinginthedark

daniel86 wrote: »

An application can decline for many reasons it can be as simple as you have typed your name wrong or date of birth. You can always call them and ask why your application was rejected and once you have obtained your report will have the same information they had at the time to challenge there decision, however on a separate note avoid Talk Mobile at all cost there are better deals on virgin mobile with only a 30 day contracts and better customer service

I've got my full report from experian and I can see Talk Mobile made an enquiry so not a problem with incorrect DOB/Name etc. The experian report is perfect: maximum possible score, no grounds for concern whatsoever. I can only conclude that Talk Mobile are lying about the rejection being because of the credit check but instead it's some kind of commercial decision - like that their advertised offer is not genuine but designed to find business leads to whom they may be able to upsell or to intentionally target likely defaulters so they can generate more revenue by hitting them with late payment penalty fees. As it happens the aim was to escape Virgin Media, I did call them to see if they could make a competitive offer but no joy. I just need more data, I don't use much voice and SMS. So I've been looking around and gone for Carphone Warehouse. That gives me 1GB of data, 4 times as much as VM for the same price (plus far more minutes/text than I need and it's a 30 day contract). Interestingly Carphone also ran a credit check at Experian today and their conclusion was that I can manage to scrape together five quid a month. Talk Mobile was £7.50 and would have got me 2GB but I expect 1GB will do as up to now I'd been managing on 250MB (by turning off data when not essential).

Angry_Bear

gropinginthedark wrote: »

I've got my full report from experian and I can see Talk Mobile made an enquiry so not a problem with incorrect DOB/Name etc. The experian report is perfect: maximum possible score, no grounds for concern whatsoever.

You can't possibly know that, because you don't know what Talk Mobile consider "grounds for concern" to be. It's my one big bugbear about the credit report process, if you are rejected based on something in your credit report, then the potential lender should have to say why in IMO. Most (maybe all) lenders keep their criteria a secret so you can never be sure you'll understand an outcome. For example:

• Company A dislike people who have a high amount of borrowing "available" to them (e.g. a couple of credit cards with high limits, even if unused)
• Company B dislikes people who are using a high percentage of their available debt (so a low limit nearly used would be much worse than a high limit unused)

No matter what you do, you will be a "cause for concern" for one of them - you just can't win!

I can only conclude that Talk Mobile are lying about the rejection being because of the credit check but instead it's some kind of commercial decision

I doubt they're flat-out lying because they could get in a lot of trouble. However, they could have some slightly obscure tight criteria that they're using to screen people to make sure that most people don't get offered the sweet deal.
Certainly mobile companies are usually pretty forgiving with issues on credit reports so it seems likely they've got something slightly unusual going on.

Martin_R

Update on this thread I started ...

I received my £2 report yesterday and waited until this morning to open it as I was scared at what I might see.

Worries over, no problems that I can see, apart from a code 8 from August 2010 when I was in intensive care, so although this should be removed this year, I will contact the lender and ask them to remove it now.

So, all I can sum miss (as on this report there isn't a credit score number), is that because all of the credit I have - which isn't massive - is paid on time and not in default, I'm not worthy of being offered more.

So, do I go into default to make me a better credit risk? No I thought not!