Old SIM card destroyed mortgage application

CagJam

Hello all

We have recently been making mortgage applications through a broker and have come to a complete dead end.

No lenders will touch us and it's all due to a daft error relating to an £11 pm SIM card. My wife had an old SIM card in her iPad that she had an initial 12 month contract for. 3 years after the contract expired, she sold the iPad and cancelled her direct debit. She thought she had contacted TMobile to tell them she no longer wanted to use the SIM but they have no record of it. Anyway, they tried to collect payment over a 4 month period and because the DD was cancelled, 4 defaults have occurred. They wrote to her to tell her but we had moved address by then so the correspondence went to an old address. Ultimately my wife had no idea she was missing the payments until eventually our old landlord brought some post round months later. At this point she phoned and paid the balance in full.

Because of this, her credit score has fallen from 999 to 450 (very poor) and all the mortgage providers are just rejecting our application due to this. My credit score is Excellent and we earn over 100k per year between us. But because of a daft mistake over £11, we can't get a mortgage! This is threatening to ruin our lives financially because we cannot be stuck without a property for 6 years while this disappears from her credit file.

She has emailed TMobile and they are just saying it's correct. How can this be fair? Prior to this she had a perfect credit history and paid various loans and cards off in full over the years with no missed payments ever.

Is there anything else we can do? We've emailed Experian too to enquire about getting a note out on her file but I don't know what good it will do.

The missed payments were May to August 2016. One mortgage provider specifically said the application was rejected due to the number of missed payments and that if it was just one payment, they might have considered it.

Any help at this stage would be much appreciated as my wife is in bits because of it.

[Deleted User]

Are you using a decent broker - or an estate agent one?

molerat

If you can prove you contacted them to cancel then you may have a way out and cause for complaint but it looks on the face of it a fair cop I am afraid. Simply cancelling the DD and walking away (and changing address !) will not end the contract. Defaults / missed payments so recently will pretty much scupper any chance of a mortgage using mainstream routes, a specialist broker may be able to assist but may come at a cost. In a couple of years things will be different.

DCFC79

Why is she in bits for, shes made a mistake and needs to learn from it.

Ruin our lives financially is a bit much isn't it, time is a healer.

Candyapple

CagJam wrote: »

No lenders will touch us and it's all due to a daft error relating to an £11 pm SIM card. My wife had an old SIM card in her iPad that she had an initial 12 month contract for. 3 years after the contract expired, she sold the iPad and cancelled her direct debit. She thought she had contacted TMobile to tell them she no longer wanted to use the SIM but they have no record of it. Anyway, they tried to collect payment over a 4 month period and because the DD was cancelled, 4 defaults have occurred. They wrote to her to tell her but we had moved address by then so the correspondence went to an old address. Ultimately my wife had no idea she was missing the payments until eventually our old landlord brought some post round months later. At this point she phoned and paid the balance in full.

It's not 4 defaults, it's 4 late payment markers. There is a massive difference.

So did she contact them to cancel the contract or not? Sounds like she needs to put in a SAR to T-Mobile to request all details of her account.

If there is no record of her contacting T-Mobile then I'm afraid you'll have to suck it up and perhaps wait a year until the late payment markers are not so prominent and even then you'll need to go with a specialist broker.

Perhaps this will be a lesson for your wife/yourself/anyone else reading this that you should always request a confirmation in writing from the company involved when you are closing any account.

CagJam

Yes indeed, lesson well and truly learned. Thanks everyone.

GingerBob_3

I know it's no real help in your current situation, but when all is sorted and hopefully you manage to get a mortgage, take this case to your MP.


While, strictly speaking, perhaps the situation could have been handled differently on your part, this is a good example of what credit reporting is not really supposed to be about.


The idea of credit reporting is to filter out delinquents. It was never intended (apparently) to be a tool to enable utility and phone providers to blackmail their customers, nor to put mistakes on a par with delinquency, but that's what we've got. the system isn't working in the best interests of the consumer and something needs to be done about it. Try your MP - see what he has to say about it.

CagJam

Yeah, that's what I'm frustrated by really. I'm not blaming anyone else for what's happened but ultimately the effect is completely disproportionate to the original mistake (if that's what it is).

The person who my wife spoke to on the phone at TMobile originally said they thought it should only be showing as one missed payment but now they are maintaining it should be 4, presumably because it took 4 months to settle.

I think my wife might have thought she was no longer bound to any credit agreement because the actual contract period had expired. The original contract was for 12 months and that had come to an end in 2014. Since then she was still paying the £11 per month on what she believed to be a rolling basis.

Candyapple

CagJam - another way of looking at this is be thankful you were still in touch with your old landlord, otherwise this situation could have easily turned into your wife getting a default placed on her files and then you really would be screwed for the next 6 years.

Get the ball rolling by sending out that subject access request and also you might want to ask over on the mortgages board about what brokers specialise in ignoring mobile phone defaults/late payments.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.php?f=15

CagJam

Good points, thank you.

Second_Account

Also why didn't you setup Mail Redirection for 12 months?, surely that is common sense when moving?