Changing supplier could affect your credit rating

SuzieSue

I've just seen a episode of Rip off Britain which featured someone who regularly changes his energy supplier.

This time he changed to NPower I believe. However, they did 2 hard credit searches on him and that resulted in him being rejected for a credit card a few weeks later.

They said that 3 companies do hard credit searches at the moment, NPower, British Gas and Eon, from what I can remember.

I just thought I'd warn anyone who might be affected.

I have also posted this on the Credit Card and Credit Rating board.

GingerBob_3

SuzieSue wrote: »

I've just seen a episode of Rip off Britain which featured someone who regularly changes his energy supplier.

This time he changed to NPower I believe. However, they did 2 hard credit searches on him and that resulted in him being rejected for a credit card a few weeks later.

They said that 3 companies do hard credit searches at the moment, NPower, British Gas and Eon, from what I can remember.

I just thought I'd warn anyone who might be affected.

I have also posted this on the Credit Card board.

Energy suppliers should be banned from having a relationship with CRAs, for this and other reasons. British Gas are the worst offenders for abusing the credit reporting system. Npower come a close second, but with them it's mostly down to incompetence rather than malicious intent.

SuzieSue

GingerBob wrote: »

Energy suppliers should be banned from having a relationship with CRAs, for this and other reasons. British Gas are the worst offenders for abusing the credit reporting system. Npower come a close second, but with them it's mostly down to incompetence rather than malicious intent.

Yes, totally agree. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. We are all encouraged to change energy provider and then something like this can happen. They should be able to do credit checks but they shouldn't be allowed to affect your rating.