Discrimination after complaint?

janbanan

I applied for a mortgage with Halifax, which was offered but we later turned it down as we changed our minds about buying.
We have now found they have messed up our credit files and have sent a complaint. We did not get a satisfactory response and are thinking about taking taking it further.

If we decide to apply for another mortgage with Halifax later on, could they regard us as trouble makers and refuse? Does a lender have right to discriminate on the grounds that you have complained?

We do want to get to the bottom of the problem, but we don't wish to burn any bridges.

Thank you.

dunstonh

If we decide to apply for another mortgage with Halifax later on, could they regard us as trouble makers and refuse? Does a lender have right to discriminate on the grounds that you have complained?

Any business has a right to refuse business if they so wish. Whether they would or not is a different matter.

Leon_W

As dunstonh says, anyone company or business is perfectly within their rights to refuse your business for whatever reason and there is no need to provide an explanation. Discrimination does not come into it.

In years gone by I ran a retail business and I would often not entertain business from certain people because I knew it would be more hassle than it was worth. At the end of the day, it was my business and I had the choice to deal with certain customers or not. Just because Halifax are considerably larger and a PLC doesn't alter the fact that it is you asking THEM for a service or product, they are not obliged to provide it, and if you don't like it, you are perfectly at liberty to go elsewhere.

One thing does intrigue me though. How can applying, and then deciding not to proceed on a mortgage "mess up" your credit rating ? Could you expand a bit on that ?

Regards
Leon

janbanan

Leon_W wrote: »

As dunstonh says, anyone company or business is perfectly within their rights to refuse your business for whatever reason and there is no need to provide an explanation. Discrimination does not come into it.

In years gone by I ran a retail business and I would often not entertain business from certain people because I knew it would be more hassle than it was worth. At the end of the day, it was my business and I had the choice to deal with certain customers or not. Just because Halifax are considerably larger and a PLC doesn't alter the fact that it is you asking THEM for a service or product, they are not obliged to provide it, and if you don't like it, you are perfectly at liberty to go elsewhere.

One thing does intrigue me though. How can applying, and then deciding not to proceed on a mortgage "mess up" your credit rating ? Could you expand a bit on that ?

Regards
Leon

Thank you for your responses. Unfortunately it makes sense what you say.

I applied for two mortgages but seven searches appear on my Experian credit file, three of them on one single day. Also, each search has a "time at address" piece of information which says 29 years, which is far from correct.
Perhaps it's not the end of the world. But I'm a bit annoyed by the fact they refuse to correct false data or explain their multiple searches when I asked politely.

I don't want to take it to the Financial Ombudsman (which they refer to) or mention the Data Protection Act, because that would surely make them think twice about lending me money in the future.

Regards

dunstonh

I don't want to take it to the Financial Ombudsman (which they refer to) or mention the Data Protection Act, because they would probably think twice about lending me money in the future.

Data protection act doesnt apply and the FOS wouldnt necessarily rule in your favour. They accept mistakes happen and would look to see if you are out of pocket due to this mistake. Which you are not. So, there would be nothing to gain by you taking it to the FOS.

What were you trying to achieve with this complaint that would be satisfactory for you?

There are plenty of reasons why duplicate checks can appear (I have suffered an common experian problem twice this year which churns out inaccurate data that usually leads to 4 checks being registered whilst it gets resolved). Maybe the person doing the check was getting timed out and repeated it or clicked the submit button multiple times not realising the request was going through but just being slow. Maybe a combination of things happened. Maybe the gap between the checks was too great for them to accept and needed to do another.

The 29 year thing is an irrelevence as it has no impact on your credit score and its only the last 3 years that matter unless you are a frequent mover. Its possible that the number of years was left blank in their input and the system assumed your age instead. Or maybe the person inputting the check decided to make that assumption as the correct number of years was not available to them.

There are so many "maybe it was this" that could apply and in reality Halifax have very little to go on to find out how it happened. They may not be able to tell you why it happened. If they did find out an employee was making an error, they would report that to the head of dept for that employee to deal with. However, they are not going to tell you what they have planned for that person.

luckyfool

Another point.

1. Halifax initial agreement in principles are "quotation searches". This means they are visible to you but not to other providers, and as such they will have no impact on your credit score. It's not clear how many of the searches would be of this type, but I would imagine it is at least 2 of the 7.

2. How long ago did this happen? The impact credit searches have on your credit file diminish rapidly over time, so while 4 or 5 footprints in the last month would potentially have a significant impact on your credit score with some lenders, 6 months down the line the effect is likely to be minimal. The danger here is you go to all this effort, through court/financial ombudsman service etc, it gets resolved 4,5,6 months down the line and some of the searches get removed, but by then it doesnt really matter anyway as their effect is now negligible.

3. I would not be too worried about Halifax blackballing you, while they would be totally within their rights I don't believe they are going to bother themselves about an issue like this. If you had late payments on a Halifax mortgage or other credit then that would be a different matter.

janbanan

Thanks dunstonh, luckyfool, Leon W for your very insightful responses.

I've decided not to follow the matter up, as I seem to have over estimated the significance of the errors.

Regards