I'm registered on the electoral role but still negative on my credit report

LiamXii

Hi,
I've never had a credit card, loan, mortgage etc.
There is nothing that directly goes against me on my credit rating except the electrol role mainly but my credit rating is still poor and I can't get nothing to improve it, like I can't even get a phone contract.

I am registered on the electrol role however I'm a service voter - so I'm not at a fixed address because I live in a different area to which I vote, isn't there a way I could have this as a positive on my credit report in any way?

It's annoyed because it could be the difference to get a loan or anything to improve my poor credit rating

Thanks in advance

Ben8282

Your English needs improving as well as your credit files.
If you have had no credit then it is unsurprising that your credit files have very little on them.
I would suggest that in future you apply for credit using the address where you are registered to vote.

LiamXii

Apologies about my English, I thought it was simple enough. That's what my question is about, I can't register to vote at the address I live because I'm a service voter, meaning I live on a military camp and I'm registered to vote in my original county that I've from...
I'm wondering if there's a system for serving soldiers to improve their credit rating

I'm solid and I have no idea how credit rating works, I'm assuming your debt is attached to an address? - which I don't have.

Ben8282

LiamXii wrote: »

Apologies about my English, I thought it was simple enough. That's what my question is about, I can't register to vote at the address I live because I'm a service voter, meaning I live on a military camp and I'm registered to vote in my original county that I've from...
I'm wondering if there's a system for serving soldiers to improve their credit rating
I'm solid and I have no idea how credit rating works, I'm assuming your debt is attached to an address? - which I don't have.

You claim not to have an address because you live in a 'military camp' and yet you say that you are registered to vote in your 'original county' that you are from.
In order to be registered to vote you must be registered to vote at a specific address.
In order to have been able to access your credit files, as you must have done in order to be aware that there was nothing on them that went directly against you, you must have given an address.
Your pay goes into a bank account. In order to open and maintain a bank account you must provide the bank with an address.
So if you need to apply for credit you will need to use this address.
Presumably you don't live alone on this 'military camp'. Have you thought of asking the other people serving with you how they cope with the problem? I would have thought that they would probably be the best people to seek advice from.
Debt is not attached to an address. It is attached to you as an individual.

Mega

I assume the o.p is unable to give more details because of the Official Secrets Act.

As to answering the question: Those you serve with should be able to advise, or tell you who to ask. It is a very specific question no civilian is likely to be able to answer. How about ssafa?

In general though, this has made me curious enough to do a little internet searching. I have worked elections and was unaware of the 'Service vote' category.

It is oddly difficult to find a certain definition (but UK electoral procedures are utterly illogical, but protected by tradition and stupidity).

It seems you need a UK address inorder for your vote to be assigned to an electoral district, which might not be where you live, but I cannot find out how this works, without pretending to be in a Service and filling out a form.

Can anyone else explain how this actually works?

Pixie5740

From the thread at the very top of this board.

“
on what your credit score really means

By Martin :money: | Edited by Johanna




If you've paid to get a credit score from one of the credit agencies, how reliable is it? We run through the truth about credit scores.

I’ve just found out that my credit score has dropped – should I be worried? Right, hold on there for a second. Actually, you don't have a credit score in the UK, you don’t have a credit rating, and there’s no such thing as a credit blacklist.
So, when you say your credit score has dropped – what exactly do you mean by that?

Well, I paid a credit reference agency to check my credit score and it's dropped. OK. So you went to one of the credit agencies – Equifax, Experian and Callcredit – and paid them a sum to get your 'credit score'. You'll get a score up to 600 from Equifax, up to 999 from Experian and up to five from Callcredit.

That's very common, and it's common to be confused about exactly what this is.

So I do get a score, but it's worthless? What you have to understand is this score doesn’t really mean that much. The first thing you need to appreciate is when you apply to a lender is that it will judge you based on three criteria.

Firstly, your application form details (which the credit reference agencies don’t have). Secondly, any past dealings you’ve had with that lender (which the credit reference agencies might not know). And thirdly, the information contained in your credit reference files (which the credit rating agencies do know).

So, the first thing to understand is that this score is based on incomplete information. The next thing to understand is different lenders are looking for different things, so they score you differently.

Just because one lender rejects you doesn’t mean another lender will do the same. The idea that this is all based on some simple score given to you by one of the credit reference agencies is false. At best, it's just an indicative guide to roughly how good or bad a risk you are.

In that case – why do they sell it to me? Well, the key word in what you’ve just said is ‘sell’. They sell it to you. Credit reference agencies used to make all their money from selling data to lenders. The idea was to help lenders predict your behaviour, which allowed them to assess whether or not you were a good person to lend to. They do that by deciding not just if you are a good or bad risk, but if you will be profitable or not.

Then some bright spark at the credit reference agencies realised they could generate a business called 'credit management'. It meant they could start to sell you all the other sorts of data and monitoring products for the first time and start making money from it. You ask why they sell it to you – well, it makes them money.

Does that mean it’s completely worthless and I should ignore it? No, I wouldn’t go that far. It's a loose indication of your rough creditworthiness, and certainly it's worth looking at the things they say are blemishes to see what you can do to improve your credit.
Where I think scoring doesn’t work is, for example, imagine you closed a credit card with a high credit limit that you'd had a long time, but didn't use any more. It's perfectly possible that your score would drop because a long relationship means it's a credit card that could give a good prediction of your behaviour.

But it also needs to be understood closing this would count as a positive for some lenders because you had less available credit.
The fact that your credit scorer has decided to reduce the score it gives you because you've cancelled that card doesn’t mean other lenders will do the same. Nor does it mean there's anything wrong.

OK – right, I understand. So what should I do to improve my credit? Well, it's important to think of this like a beauty parade. Just as everybody finds different people attractive – so do lenders.

There are general things you can do to 'rouge' up your credit appearance that make sense everywhere. As this guide's only 60 seconds long, I'm not going to go into that here. Instead, read the full Credit Scores guide.

It's very important to understand – this is art, not science.

What works for one lender won’t necessarily work for another – so there's no tried and tested right answer.

With that in mind forget about any score or rating and focus on building credit history. Lenders want to see is a pattern of how you handle debt. Is there a particular reason you would like to build a credit history, for example are you looking to get a mortgage in the near future or are you simply trying to obtain a phone contract?

Fireflyaway

Ben8282 wrote: »

Your English needs improving as well as your credit files.
If you have had no credit then it is unsurprising that your credit files have very little on them.
I would suggest that in future you apply for credit using the address where you are registered to vote.

Why??
People come on here for help. You can also see the OP is new, but instead of simply trying to help, you slide in some comment about his / her use of English. You can understand perfectly well what the question was.

Feral_Moon

http://www.experian.co.uk/consumer/credit-education/credit-rating-advice-for-armed-forces-personnel.html