Guardian Article on the credit 'score' agencies

TheShape

It's no wonder people get confused with articles such as this:

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/jul/17/credit-score-angencies-break-lives-lenders-no-mortgage

StopIt

Lovely typo of agencies in the url too.


Anyway, everything is fine about the article but the referencing to this darned score.


The RNG of the CRA isn't what caused the issues in the article, the events that the CRAs recorded has. In the event of errors, they should be corrected as a matter of priority and as usual, these companies, along with lenders drag their heels too much.


It should not need people to contact the media to get errors corrected in good time.


The advice in the article is correct also, but maybe someone from MSE Towers could get in touch to remind the author that the score itself is generated for the benefit of the user only, lenders do not see it, although they can make up their own scoring.

Ben8282

I am not impressed with this article at all. The author even refers to the Credit Reference Agencies as Credit Score Agencies!
There is also something not quite right with the examples given. Take the first example. We are supposed to believe that as a result of a direct debit being paid from his current account which allegedly should not have been paid, the account 'plunged' into the red and was defaulted. A very unlikely story. The very worse case scenario would be an unauthorised overdraft fee, some interest and a status 1 reporting for the month, not a default. Either the author does not understand the difference between a late payment marker and a default or else there is a lot of relevant information missing from this story.
Questions such as why he cancelled the direct debit with his bank rather than with the company which was to instigate the direct debit, why he did not cancel it himself using Lloyds online banking which is very easy as there is a cancel button next to each direct debit listed rather than in some way which required Lloyds to process a request, why he never checked his online banking to see if it had actually been cancelled and, more importantly, why he cancelled a direct debit with his bank in the full knowledge that money was due to be taken need to be asked.
Then, in order for this situation to have ended up as a default, he presumably then failed to check his account for some time after the direct debit was paid out, failed to pay any money into the account for some time and continued to ignore correspondence from Lloyds regarding the situation.
This is not the fault of the CRA's!
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