Dysfunctional credit reporting makes me £15

GingerBob_3

mrmagooooooo wrote: »

What you describe right there is a credit facility. Someone A owes money to Someone B

Someone B has in this case provided the credit facility to Someone A

And you can bet your bottom dollar that Someone B has done a Credit Check on Someone A before lending to them.

Same thing with the Bank. The customer my not intentionally aim to borrow from the bank but may find themselves in a position through no fault or fault of their own owing the bank money. The bank will want a good idea beforehand if the customer is likely to pay it back.

I don't understand why you cannot see this and clearly reading the posts nobody else can understand why you cannot see the need for a credit search either.

A credit check mitigates some risk in my example as if the bank found themselves in that position they would want to know the customer is likely to pay this back. A person with Defaults and CCJ's has already proven that they cannot manage their finances and as such is unlikely to pay back anything owed to the bank.

And lastly, Banks have been running credit checks on customers for at least the past 20 years.

It really is quite simple; because I'm not applying for credit. The fact that it's possible to end up owing someone money is not relevant. There are many cases where inadvertently you can end up owing money, but where credit is not involved. If I didn't apply for an overdraft, then the bank can bounce the cheques or whatever, as per the basic account. It a point of principle. I'm not applying for credit, but the blighters carry out a credit check anyway which, according to you, is just on the off chance that due to a bounced cheque I might end up owing them money.


But this is academic. If you read my first post you'll see that my complaint is that these checks for a facility that offers me no credit, can affect other applications. The credit check for a non-credit current account is viewed in the same light by other lenders as a credit check carried out for a multi-thousand pound loan or a mortgage. What a bloody crack-pot system! But then, it's born of the CRAs, so what can you expect.

mrmagooooooo

GingerBob wrote: »

I'm not applying for credit, but the blighters carry out a credit check anyway which, according to you, is just on the off chance that due to a bounced cheque I might end up owing them money.

But you have to bear in mind that there are a substantial amount of people out there that don't bounce a cheque on the off chance.. they do it all the time.

There are people out there that will attempt to take the bank for everything they can wangle out of them.

GingerBob wrote: »

The fact that it's possible to end up owing someone money is not relevant.

you are completely missing the point here. The fact that its possible is exactly what makes it relevant!

The fact of the matter is if you apply for a current account they will run a credit check. you are always made aware of the fact before you submit an application. If you are not happy with their terms then don't apply. But if you do "agree" to the terms in order to open them then you dont have any right to complain about it later. YOU agreed to the terms nobody else.

The banks and everyone else that runs credit checks are only looking to protect their interests and their businesses, who could blame them for that.

Then there is the Fraud checks that also come out of a credit check that the banks use. But im not going in to that. For now i give up and hope that one day you will understand why a Business would want to use any means possible to protect its interests.

:beer:

GingerBob_3

Well, well, well. New information has come to light. My original issue has nothing to do with multiple credit checks on non-credit current accounts, or even the very large credit facility we have with multiple credit cards. Today we received a letter from some outfit called New Day (never heard of them before today). I'll paraphrase:


Dear Mrs Bob,


As a responsible lender we check up on you with the credit reference agencies to ensure you're not a potential delinquent. These checks have revealed limited data held against you at your current address, so we must assume that delinquency on your part is a possibility. Maybe you have recently moved, and if this is so, you can send us an original copy of

to prove your current address. Etc, etc, Yours, New Day. So there we have it. A "thin credit file". Which actually I find quite worrying, given that they were looking at the wrong address! Yes, the sales girl, apparently, wrongly keyed in our house number - out by one digit, and the letter was sent to the wrong address as well. So if they've got the wrong address, why a "thin file"; it should be "no file"! In trying to contact New Day to demand an explanation; surprise, surprise, you can't email them, and their website has no phone number for this type of query. What is it with these low-tech companies that don't know about email? Anyway, all's well that ends well. We got the Barclaycard cashback, the merchant got a sale, and New Day didn't get a customer who would have made no money for them. Now, I just need to get on to the ICO to see how New Day managed to extract "thin" data from the CRA files whilst using a wrong address.

GingerBob_3

mrmagooooooo wrote: »

But you have to bear in mind that there are a substantial amount of people out there that don't bounce a cheque on the off chance.. they do it all the time.

There are people out there that will attempt to take the bank for everything they can wangle out of them.



you are completely missing the point here. The fact that its possible is exactly what makes it relevant!

The fact of the matter is if you apply for a current account they will run a credit check. you are always made aware of the fact before you submit an application. If you are not happy with their terms then don't apply. But if you do "agree" to the terms in order to open them then you dont have any right to complain about it later. YOU agreed to the terms nobody else.

The banks and everyone else that runs credit checks are only looking to protect their interests and their businesses, who could blame them for that.

Then there is the Fraud checks that also come out of a credit check that the banks use. But im not going in to that. For now i give up and hope that one day you will understand why a Business would want to use any means possible to protect its interests.

:beer:

Oh dear, oh dear! I completely understand the whole shooting match. Study my original post and you may see this. I am complaining about the current arrangements and suggest they are less than perfect and don't serve the customer - that's all. Now, I realise I'm not going to make any progress with the bunch of bank-loving contributors here, so please don't try and "explain" stuff again. I know how it works - badly in my view.

mrmagooooooo

I am by no means a bank loving individual i just see why they would want say a UK or a USA as its customer rather than a Greece or Italy. The sooner you see that we are NOT the CRA's customer the better. The agencies are actually serving their customers, the customer isn't us, they couldn't give a flying hoot about us. The banks and credit card companies are their customer and they are serving them very well and making a fortune in the process.

Look I actually agree with parts of what you are saying.. yes to you it seems pointless to credit check you for an account you will never use for credit and it probably is, you will probably never ever owe them money but there are millions more people that would whether they wanted to or not.

Granted the CRA system is not perfect but serves a purpose

mrmagooooooo

NewDay by the way handle credit cards for 3rd party's

Debenhams and Laura Ashley for instance uses Newday for their Credit Card.

I believe they also issue the Aqua bad credit card

Horrible company imo so in getting declined you may have dodged a bullet.

mcpitman

@MrMagooooo - just give up, you are wasting your time.

GingerBob_3

Just a query on this one - reminder: wife turned down for store card. Thought it was to do with all the current accounts we've opened recently. Actually, it was caused by shop assistant keying in wrong house number.


Now, also addressed to the wrong house number, we receive an invitation to open an Aqua card (also supplied by NewDay, the store card provider).


It occurred to me that lurking on the CRAs' files will be a completely bogus set of records with my wife's details, but someone else's address. This would be the case if the chumps at NewDay created a record with the bum information. I don't really care about this, but I'm wondering - if you apply for credit and there's no record about you/your address at the CRAs, is the merchant allowed to create a record?

mcpitman

GingerBob wrote: »

Just a query on this one - reminder: wife turned down for store card. Thought it was to do with all the current accounts we've opened recently. Actually, it was caused by shop assistant keying in wrong house number.


Now, also addressed to the wrong house number, we receive an invitation to open an Aqua card (also supplied by NewDay, the store card provider).


It occurred to me that lurking on the CRAs' files will be a completely bogus set of records with my wife's details, but someone else's address. This would be the case if the chumps at NewDay created a record with the bum information. I don't really care about this, but I'm wondering - if you apply for credit and there's no record about you/your address at the CRAs, is the merchant allowed to create a record?

I would assume that NewDay have created a record at your incorrectly input address. You/your wife are now recieving marketing information from them, as I assume the Sales Assistant didn't tick the "no marketing" box.