If Experian say "identification failed" who do you contact to ask why?

jessimac

>>if they are holding your data , why should they not be answereable when the info has been collated incorrectly  <<

- Exactly

"If you aren't paying them a fee. Why should they provide you with a first class service?"

- It's failures of logic like this which help excuse poor service from companies which the rest of us thenhave to endure..

Loan companies are paying Experian to provide an accurate credit rating to enable them to select reliable people to loan to. I have never been in debt, and always paid my bills on time, which would normally suggest I am a safe person to loan to. However because Experian have failed to examine my data in a sensible manner, they have apparently allowed one piece of information (possibly simply address formatting by a vendor) to override the other pieces of information that accurately indicate my creditworthiness.

This in itself is not the major problem, as we have to accept that companies - even ones making huge profits for little effort - can make mistakes.

The major problem is that Experian fail to indicate which piece of information is 'at fault', their website provides contradictory information and - it appears so far - it is not easy to get in touch with them to ascertain the issue, given I am stuck in 'ID failure' status.

So, the fact that Experian aren't providing me with a way to correct their mistake, and so provide their client with another safe person to loan to, means that they are failing their client.

Get it now?

p00hsticks

jessimac said:

Loan companies are paying Experian to provide an accurate credit rating to enable them to select reliable people to loan to. I have never been in debt, and always paid my bills on time, which would normally suggest I am a safe person to loan to.

If you've never been in debt and never had a loan, what makes you think Experian have any data on you at all ? If you have no credit history then the only data they're likely to have on you - if any - is the basic information from the electoral roll.

The safest people to lend money to are not those who've never borrowed money before, but those who have and have demonstrated that they pay it back.

Have you tried approaching your bank for a loan ? They at least would have some detailed knowledge of how you run your current account and so be able to see whether you would be a safe bet to lend money to

jessimac

Surprised at the lack of reasoning ability of some of the responders to this thread.

Experian clearly have ‘data’ on me now, because they asked me to supply the ‘data’ via the MSE Credit Club. By your defective logic, anybody who had never before applied for a loan would never be able to join the MSE Credit Club (or have their ID validated by Experian).

If you are unware of the process, they ask you for:

Sex; Full name; Address; Date of Birth; Marital status; Number of dependents; Housing status; Date of arrival at address; Employment status; Personal annual income; Additional household income; Primary bank account.

All the information I gave them has been triple checked and is correct.

The information I have given them matches that which appears on the electoral roll, which you claim is “the only data they're likely to have on you - if any - is the basic information from the electoral roll.”

If you use basic powers of logic, the fact that I have provided a valid address which exists on the electoral roll, yet they are saying that I have ‘failed’ my ID check, means that they have collected some additional data on me, that conflicts with the other data I have provided.

Which, as I say, is fine – we understand that companies make mistakes.

The problem is as outlined above – Experian do not seem to provide a simple way to identify the cause of the ID failure and rectify it.

Get it now?

Telling me to give up and go to a bank (which doesn’t offer the product I need anyway, never mind at the same excellent rates) may indeed be your way of operating -  which probably explains yet again why these UK companies think they can operate to such poor standards.

Mobeer

Have you tried getting a statutory report by Post:

https://www.experian.co.uk/consumer/statutory-report.html      (and click on by post tab)

Or making a Data Access Request:

https://www.experian.co.uk/consumer/data-access/index.html

It seems like you would be in a better position to compain if you have completed these approaches.

DCFC79

Your credit rating is onlt seen by yourself only, lenders etc see your history.
Have you tried logging in via mse credit club who use same information from Experian or Transunion or clearscore.

dr_adidas01

DCFC79 said:

Your credit rating is onlt seen by yourself only, lenders etc see your history.
Have you tried logging in via mse credit club who use same information from Experian or Transunion or clearscore.

I don't think you have read it all, they tried to create an mse credit club account and they have failed the Experian Identity checks so are not able to see their credit report.

dr_adidas01

jessimac said:

Surprised at the lack of reasoning ability of some of the responders to this thread.

Experian clearly have ‘data’ on me now, because they asked me to supply the ‘data’ via the MSE Credit Club. By your defective logic, anybody who had never before applied for a loan would never be able to join the MSE Credit Club (or have their ID validated by Experian).

If you are unware of the process, they ask you for:

Sex; Full name; Address; Date of Birth; Marital status; Number of dependents; Housing status; Date of arrival at address; Employment status; Personal annual income; Additional household income; Primary bank account.

All the information I gave them has been triple checked and is correct.

The information I have given them matches that which appears on the electoral roll, which you claim is “the only data they're likely to have on you - if any - is the basic information from the electoral roll.”

If you use basic powers of logic, the fact that I have provided a valid address which exists on the electoral roll, yet they are saying that I have ‘failed’ my ID check, means that they have collected some additional data on me, that conflicts with the other data I have provided.

Which, as I say, is fine – we understand that companies make mistakes.

The problem is as outlined above – Experian do not seem to provide a simple way to identify the cause of the ID failure and rectify it.

Get it now?

Telling me to give up and go to a bank (which doesn’t offer the product I need anyway, never mind at the same excellent rates) may indeed be your way of operating -  which probably explains yet again why these UK companies think they can operate to such poor standards.

Experian may well have data on you, though you may have whats called a thin file, which means there isn't much data on your credit report.

Re-reading your original post you say "I've never needed a loan and have a been with Lloyds for visa card" which to me suggests its the card attached to your bank account?

Also you are on the Electoral roll at your current address and have been for quite sometime?

Do you have any credit products for example Credit Cards, Store Cards, Catalogue accounts, Overdraft?

If you've never had any borrowing of any kind then all that will be on your credit file is your Bank Account and your electoral register information (Which means you have a thin credit file). Also if you have never borrowed anything lenders will have no data to asses if you will pay them back. Which in turn means most lenders will decline your applications for credit.

jessimac

Have 'Thanked' the couple of people who actually came up with useful information as opposed to uninformed opinion. Not quite through the woods yet, but posting the below to help others.

Webchat (from Experian Contact Us page) - tried it, throws you out within seconds due to 'no agent available'

Freephone number (from Experian Contact Us page) - tried it, at some point it asks you for your 'CreditExpert' membership number, or '*' if you don't have one. You press '*' it tells you to p*ss off, basically.

Thanks to the person who gave me the (non-freephone) 0344 481 0800 number - which they don't list on their Contact Us page, but somehow comes up on Google...

First time I rang it (using an iPhone) it got to the point where it said 'press * if not a member', I did, it refused to hear the '*', I did it again, it... well, in the end I used a non-iPhone phone.

That time it did hear the '*' when I called it again, and gave me more optioins including asking about Credit Report problems. Got through to a really nice guy who didn't rush me, and his first suggestion (as somebody else suggested above) was to get the Statutory Report. He explained that this does not use the same database as the MSE Credit Club/Online method, and should arrive within 10 days (the website says about 7, and someone who has recently done it said 3 days was their experience).

So, I went online and ordered it.

One word of caution - bizarrely  (or maybe deliberately, to ensure they get the address you think you are at), the way they get you to enter your address does not invoke the PAF file - so I entered (anonymised here): House number = 20, Road = Yew Road, Flat number = 5, Town = Birmingham, Postcode = B1 1AA.

This came up as: 5, 20 Yew Road, Birmingham, B1 1AA. I actually decided not to play around with this (i.e. add Acacia Block after the '5' as I thought that might scr*w things up computer-verification wise - and anyway, this was going to be an online report wasn't it... so nothing would be delivered in the post. Right?

Wrong. After Submitting, it then said that they would POST a passkey to me, and of course I envisioned this being delivered to 5, 20 Yew Road, Birmingham, B1 1AA, which the mail person could easily mistake for 5 Yew Road, as opposed to Flat 5, Acacia Block, 20 Yew Road..

Cue me having to do it all again, only this time faffing around to get the final address to read: "Flat 5, Acacia Block, 20 Yew Road, Birmingham B1 1AA" i.e. understandable to the mail person.

Does anyone know why Experian etc. can't use Passport/Driving Licence numbers as part of the ID process? Given both have address info on their records, would surely be less weird way of doing things.

I shall update this thread with info as I get it, as clearly I can't be the only one having this runaround.

jessimac

dr_adidas01 said:

Experian may well have data on you, though you may have whats called a thin file, which means there isn't much data on your credit report.

Re-reading your original post you say "I've never needed a loan and have a been with Lloyds for visa card" which to me suggests its the card attached to your bank account?

Also you are on the Electoral roll at your current address and have been for quite sometime?

Do you have any credit products for example Credit Cards, Store Cards, Catalogue accounts, Overdraft?

If you've never had any borrowing of any kind then all that will be on your credit file is your Bank Account and your electoral register information (Which means you have a thin credit file). Also if you have never borrowed anything lenders will have no data to asses if you will pay them back. Which in turn means most lenders will decline your applications for credit.

Hi - actually bank is non-Lloyds, so known to two banks for over 20 years (one for current account, one for CC). I have been at the current address, and on electoral roll for 20+ years. No credit products apart from CC, with good record on that.

I guessed I would have a 'thin file', but on the other hand I now have collateral (an inherited house which I am looking for a small BTL mortgage on, while staying in my long-rented flat), so a loan to me is not exactly in any danger of defaulting, given they could just take the house.

I think we need to distinguish between people getting a credit report with mistakes on it, and people like myself who fail to even register for a credit report - i.e. where Experian say 'we can't identify you'. All available evidence (Bank, Credit Card company, HMRC, Electoral Roll, Landlord, Passport, Driving License) proves that I do exist, because they can contact me at my supplied address. That's why it is against common sense for Experian to simply say 'you have failed the Experian identification process', without providing a clear indication of what data they feel they are lacking to prove that 'I' and 'my address' are indeed 'me'.  There will be many people out there like myself who have never had a loan or mortgage, and whilst that might - arguably - be grounds for Experian marking me down credit-score wise, it certainly should not be the case for denying my existence...

Bottom line - like so many large corporates since the 80's, a lot of these companies have made money hand-over-fist on the backof automation, whilst trying to spend as little as possible on human customer-facing support and using PR slogans as a fig-leaf. 'You're important to us...'

The whole credit-scoring and ID checking thing needs to be made much more transparent - can't see why the government can't provide some sort of service, some parts of their computer systems (especially around notifying a death and thereby cancelling various accounts simultaneously) actually work very well nowadays IMHO.

yksi

Experian customer service is absolutely crap - and it's still crap even if you pay for the subscription. Like, breathtakingly so, with MONTHS going by and no resolution to problems despite repeated requests. I told them how rubbish they are and dropped to the free service, and the crap service continues. So I just wanted to say that I feel your frustrations.

If (IF!) you can manage to get hold of your statutory credit report, you can dispute or put in a notice of correction. I had an address in there listed as "Flat 4" when the Royal Mail address was actually "Flat 1-4", which was causing me to fail identity checks. Despite repeatedly asking them to fix it, even when the banks were clearly addressing my mail correctly, Experian didn't get their idiotic act together until I filed a notice of dispute.

Their latest craptastic effort was to trap me in a login loop, every login attempt sent me a phone code which welcomed me, told me I already had an account and didn't need to register, and redirected me to the login page. On three different browsers and two different devices, so no, it wasn't cookies. Their support is impossible to contact either by phone or online, as you are only given the options to subscribe or to reset passwords, which wasn't helpful. The only way to solve that was to register a new account, go figure... how is it that a company is allowed to act so deplorably while holding our personal information and we have no say in it? Does anyone actually think that a company which can't customer service their way out of a paper bag can actually keep our personal info safe?