Issue with Carphone Warehouse & O2 Multiple Hard Credit Searches

Aniallation

Hoping someone may be able to point me in the right direction of where I may find help to resolve this issue!
Will keep this as simple as possible, but a small weird issue may have now escalated into a credit-destroying nightmare!

Went into Carphone Warehouse (CW) on Friday to upgrade my phone. They found the best deal for the phone I wanted with O2 which meant changing networks. I have done this before so knew what to expect.
The system would not allow it to go through as it said my provided address was incorrect and did not match that held by my bank account.

I contacted my bank whilst in store who said to me that my address was 100% correct and they could see CW were doing their thing with my account (taking £1 then putting it back to verify).

This was attempted three times.

I was told to go back in next day where I would have better luck as the helpline would be manned. (I had gone in store later on Friday when it was not).

The advisor tried it again for me, no luck - same address issue.
They phoned their helpline who said it was most likely an issue with CW or O2 systems and there wasn't much they could do about it - was advised to buy online or to go direct to O2 themselves away from CW.


I am a member of Clearscore and this morning have had an email to say that THREE Hard searches for credit were completed against my account by O2 on Friday 15th.
I am expecting two further searches to have been done on Saturday 16th as well based on what happened.

Now, I want these removed as I know you can do.
Contacted Carphone first and was passed around and around departments, every person seemed to have no idea about this problem.
Getting a little frustrated, I tried 02 instead who said I needed to contact CW, or failing this they gave me an email address to try with 02 for credit application issues.

I have emailed this address and they respond within 10 working days (worried this will be too long and my score may be affected) and am unsure if this will even result in a resolution.

I called CW back, was passed around again then advised to contact Equifax. I called Equifax who said I needed to contact CW as they could not do anything if I didn't have an account.


My situation is I want the searches removed as there is zero issue with my credit (my Clearscore is over 500) and I successfully got a phone online directly with ID (amazingly this was also significantly cheaper than advertised in CW!) this morning online with no problems.
The issues with my address must be a system issue with either CW or 02 and are not my problem. I do not want this experience to have ruined my credit score (which I am also quite protective over as I have recently taken the step of becoming a self employed business owner and know what that can be like for things like mortgages etc).

Does anyone know what I should do or who I should contact in this circumstance? Any help or assistance that could be provided would be very much appreciated.

BobQ

Cannot help you but I sympathise. CPW are an utter shambles when it comes to signing up customers. I will never use them again

[Deleted User]

Don’t fret over your score as it’s a made up number and certainly not worth getting over protective about.

It might be difficult to get the searches removed as they are an accurate representation of what took place.

Try making a formal complaint to CPW first

MEM62

Aniallation wrote: »

a small weird issue may have now escalated into a credit-destroying nightmare!

A little over-dramatic. These searches will not destroy your credit standing and in a couple of months this impact of these will have diminished.

By all means complain to CPW but I expect that they will be as inept in their response as they were in the first place. Unless you have an imminent need for substantial borrowing these searches will not cause you any issues beyond.

jimbo26

Aniallation wrote: »

I do not want this experience to have ruined my credit score

Don't worry about the score, lenders do not see this. They make decisions based on their own algorithms and information contained within your credit file.

This is not a 'credit destroying nightmare'. The searches will have minimal if not zero impact on any credit applications.

Life is too short to worry about a few hard searches, try to move on from this and put it down to experience.

Aniallation

Thanks for the replies everyone - quite passionate about this I guess because I am self employed (recently) and am also planning the sale of my current house and purchase of a larger property in 12 months or so.

I do not want the CPW complete mess up to affect me negatively when I have done nothing wrong.

I will pursue this as a complaint with CPW - do not want to just shrug my shoulders and sign "oh well" and let this kind of thing go unnoticed!

Having come from a job in retail for 14 years where the smallest issue was blown up by a customer and I had to basically bend over backwards to do whatever they wanted when they weren't even in the right... think this is worth complaining about!