Help with credit file -

LMR91

Hi,

I was hoping someone would be able to offer some help or assistance to a current situation I find myself in.

I am now 28 however 8 years ago when I was a student and living away from home I found myself short of cash and opened a new bank account with my student address at the time at Barclays as they could offer an immediate £200 overdraft which I could withdraw and use upon setting up the account. As I only used the service of the bank once to withdraw this money, over time this was something I completely forgot about until recently when I decided to check my credit file to realise I had a default account with Barclays to the sum of £350.

What had in fact happened was the account had been sat at minus 200 for x amount of years until after x amount of years the account lost its interest free overdraft which meant the account became minus 202 which then caused unplanned overdraft fees meaning the account had been slowly building up to a balance of minus 350 before Barclays defaulted the account. Obviously Barclays sent correspondence out regarding this which I never received as I didn’t tell Barclays my new address ( I accept this is my own doing)

Now Barclays have sold the debt to a debt recovery agency which I have managed to settle in full however I am now aware this default will be on my account for 6 years. I am now at an age where I am looking ahead to getting my own mortgage within this time frame and I’m wondering what the implications of this naive episode in my younger years will have on this? I know this sounds unlikely but is there any remote chance I can get the default removed from my credit file within these 6 years and if there is a chance would it be Barclays I need to contact? I was interested to see if anyone else had found themselves in a similar situation with overdraft fees and if they managed to resolve the impact on the credit file?

I know a debt is a debt regardless of the amount however I’m now worried about the impact this relatively small amount of £200 which turned into £350 is going to have on future applications.

Any help or advice would be much appreciated.

Thank you

Willing2Learn

Hi and welcome to the forum LMR91

LMR91 wrote: »

What had in fact happened was the account had been sat at minus 200 for x amount of years until after x amount of years the account lost its interest free overdraft which meant the account became minus 202 which then caused unplanned overdraft fees meaning the account had been slowly building up to a balance of minus 350 before Barclays defaulted the account. Obviously Barclays sent correspondence out regarding this which I never received as I didn’t tell Barclays my new address ( I accept this is my own doing)

Now Barclays have sold the debt to a debt recovery agency which I have managed to settle in full however I am now aware this default will be on my account for 6 years. I am now at an age where I am looking ahead to getting my own mortgage within this time frame and I’m wondering what the implications of this naive episode in my younger years will have on this? I know this sounds unlikely but is there any remote chance I can get the default removed from my credit file within these 6 years and if there is a chance would it be Barclays I need to contact? I was interested to see if anyone else had found themselves in a similar situation with overdraft fees and if they managed to resolve the impact on the credit file?

I am afraid that you are stuck with the default (unless you are exceedingly lucky and they decide to remove the default as some sort of 'goodwill gesture'). Very unlikely though...as the default is factually correct...

The default will be automatically removed from your credit file(s) six years from the default date.

MovingForwards

The older the default, the less it bothers some mortgage lenders.

The questions are:
1. When was the default
2. When was it paid
3. When are you looking to buy