Credit agencies experience so far (surprising!)

changeforbetter

Hi All,

I've just recently started using the credit agencies to follow my accounts a little better.

Just wanted to share my experience so far, and ask a couple of questions about it, if others can comment please.

I've found it a little surprising I must admit. I've only used Noddle and Equifax so far. As they are the free ones to access. I guess I will need to look at Experian, but rather loathe even to pay the lower fees and they also hide those options away anyway on their site - I think you can get a £2 one, but even that is hidden behind numerous ads for paying almost £15 per month (no way!)

So, on the two I've looked at:

Noddle: pretty great, for free! Almost all of my credits on there (7 out of the 8 listed).

Did have a little query though - I noticed they listed for most a 'balance history' and 'statement balance' too, but these don't always totally match up, so not sure why that is?

Also noticed a couple of months on the 'payments' that seemed off a little bit (e.g. showing 1 instead of a 20). I moved from the token 1 to 20 when my DMP started, but seemed it took a few months for some of my creditors to record as a 20 payment instead).

Overall though, Noddle is pretty excellent for me to track it all.

Clearscore (Equifax) - signed up for that as it's the Equifax one for free. So that's good at least.

Disappointed to see, however, that under 'credit cards' (7 of mine are CCs) they listed 'None'. Not one single account?

Other stuff (current account, mortgage) but none of my CC accounts, seems pretty poor from Equifax...?


Any thoughts or explanations, or questions for anything about the above would be much appreciated. And I hope this can prove useful advice for any who haven't yet used these agencies.

StokieBecks

Not every company you owe money to uses all three credit referencing agencies to report to hence why your cards aren't listed on one site but aren't for another. They tend to just report to one.

StokieBecks

Also with clearscore check they aren't listed under closed accounts. If they have defaulted they seem to list them as closed even though they aren't

changeforbetter

That seems fairly poor if Equifax list defaulted accounts as simply closed accounts - not much use as a reference point in that case!
Yes, I did appreciate they don't need to report to all agencies, though had thought some might have done (rather than 0).
In particular, I'm trying to track down the credit agency record for the one that was missing on Noodle - guessing that must be the more expensive Experian then...