Myjar - Credit reporting.

JamieJ89

Back in circa 2015, I ran up a lot of debt with payday loans and credit cards. Majority of these have been settled now, and currently working on the last few, whilst also trying to repair my credit history.

I've been checking my credit reports, and the Myjar one stands out.

I took out a loan with myjar in May 2015, and within a few months struggled with repayments so failed on my contractual repayments. Original repayments were around £80, but I came to an agreement with them to settle the balance with reduced instalments of £20. I managed this for 3 months before I sought the help of Stepchange. Myjar put the account on hold for a number of months to allow me breathing  space to sort this out. Important note here is that approx 6 months into the stepchange DMP, the DMP got cancelled as I simply couldnt keep up with the repayments.

I then came to a separate agreement to myjar which I paid (£20 a month) until circa August 2018. No payment has been made to them since this date. The default date for this loan is December 2018 and my query is when the default should really be from? They are saying that as I was making some payment (albeit not my contractual amount), that the default date is correct and they stand by it.

My credit Karma reports the following:

September 2015 to June 2016 - Missed payments (myjar are saying it is reported as this as payments at the time were being made to a debt collection agency).

July 2016 - November 2017 - No data

December 2017 - November 2018 - Missed payments

December 2018 onwards - Default

The missed payments markers showing were times when i was making a much reduced payment to them.

Are they right in what they are saying? Do i have a leg to stand on to get this moved back somewhat? If i had made no payments at the outset rather than trying to make some form of payment, i would be in a better situation now, so looks as though i have been penalised for trying to do the right thing.

Any advice or comments would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

sambaird

From the timeline you suggest, it certainly does appear that the default date is placed at the correct time.
A default indicates a complete breakdown in the contractual arrangement - the fact that you were making reduced payments up until Aug 2018 indicates that while the relationship was not as per the original agreement, it had not completely broken down.

The ICO guidance suggests that default markers are placed 3-6 months after a the relationship breaks down, and MyJar look to have done this at Month 3/4 (depending on the specific date of last payment) from your timeline.

I would say the best you can hope for is that they move it back a month (November 2018), but it’s really at their discretion.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and obviously looking back now if you had of stopped paying altogether to start with... then default...then make an arrangement, you would be in a better position - but only in terms of a default coming off your report sooner.