Company credit report/score

jdo10

Sorry if I've posted this in the wrong forum. I am interested in peoples thoughts on credit reports/scores for a company. As a consumer, I am about to make a large purchase from a company. I would like to know that company is in good business health i.e. not about to receive my money and then falter through bankruptcy or worse. A quick online search has brought up various offerings from the usual names e.g. Experian, Equifax and others. Some are purportedly free, others charge. My questions are:
1) Are any of the credit check companies notably better then the others for company checks?
2) Any advice (or where I can find it) on understanding the information contained n the report! I'm not an accountant - it appears that the reports contain such info as credit limit, credit rating, risk. I need a context to be able to understand whether e.g. credit limit applying to the company is good or not.
3) Do these commercially prepared credit reports contain valuable information beyond that available from Companies House?

Thank you in advance for any advice.

National_Debtline

Hi jdo10 and welcome to MSE,


I am afraid it would not be possible to check the credit report of the company you intend to buy from. The best thing you could do is check their status on Companies House - https://www.gov.uk/get-information-about-a-company but you would not have permission to check their credit file. If you are concerned, perhaps you should reconsider your purchase.


There are 3 credit reference agencies, if you ever wanted to check your own. Experian, Equifax and Transunion (previously Call Credit). All of which now offer a free statutory report. Good luck,


Laura
@natdebtline

Nasqueron

You can look up if a company has accounts filed etc on companies house and could probably dig through those but to be honest, just pay on a credit card for all or some of the money (so long as it's not over £30,000) and then the card firm will be jointly liable under Section 75 rules in case the firm has issues

jdo10

Thank you Laura and Nasqueron for your replies.

This is the sort of report I think may be useful:
experian.co.uk/business-express/credit-report

It states on that page that it gives you insight into a business' financial stability.

Thank you for the suggestion regarding the credit card - in this instance the value is over the £30,000 limit (it's a campervan). I don't have any reason for concern with the company - I'm just undertaking as much due diligence as is reasonable due to the size of the purchase.

SeanG79

You most definitely can "credit check" a company.

At my company, we use Experian, https://www.businessexpress-uk.com

Whilst majority of the information is available at Companies House, it includes a section for adverse information and often also includes payment performance (from companies reporting to Experian), so you can see if they may be paying invoices beyond term.

There are similar companies providing this service, Credit Safe and Mint come to mind.

Nebulous2

Surely you pay a deposit and then pay the rest at or very close to collection?

jdo10

Thank you Nebulous2, yes that is how I'll proceed. I just wanted to get a feel for the company for both now and likely stability in the future with regard to warranties etc. (I fully appreciate the company's circumstances can change).

Nebulous2

jdo10 wrote: »

Thank you Nebulous2, yes that is how I'll proceed. I just wanted to get a feel for the company for both now and likely stability in the future with regard to warranties etc. (I fully appreciate the company's circumstances can change).

A motorhome is on my list for when I retire. I've been idly looking on an occasional basis already. There are a huge amount of decisions, but I'll be going for a reasonably local dealer, which has been around for some time, rather than the cheapest price. The last thing I want is to have to travel a huge distance for servicing or warranty repairs. I'll also be poring over reviews for all the local dealers.



Motorhomes are complicated pieces of kit and most people I've known have had problems of some sort that needed fixing. Warranties seem to be complicated - there are some factory backed warranties but the dealer does seem to be responsible for a lot of the warranty work. You can't just go to the local dealer in the way you can with a car. Again I see solid reviews as more important than trying to check the company accounts.