Same name affecting credit rating

Scottm82

Hi all.
We have a scenario at home where by my Dad lives in one property and my brother lived at another, similar names, same postcode and my dad and brother have the same initial and obviously the same surname.
Brother moved 2 years ago and was terrible with money and constantly getting into debt, this is now affecting my Dads credit rating as companies such as experian do a "lazy" search and will apportion the debt/bad credit to my dads file based on the initial, surname and postcode. Dad lost one credit card allowance due to this and has now been contacted by his current CC company to say his previous £5k allowance has now been reduce to £75. He has spoken to Experian who said they will resolve the issue in 28days but is there anything he can do to stop this? 

[Deleted User]

He needs to check all three files to ensure there is no crossover.  Experian aren't doing a 'lazy search' - they don't do searches - but the wrong data is being applied to the wrong file - whether through provider error or Experian issue. 

His 'allowances' - or credit limits - may be cut for any reason - it's unlikely to be because of this issue, as the accounts would be far more likely to be closed. 

Make sure that each had the correct addresses registered with each lender or bank, to avoid cross over.

eskbanker

Credit rating agencies are required under the Data Protection Act to process personal data fairly and accurately, etc, so any such 'lazy search' that resulted in data from two different people being combined erroneously would be a breach of these obligations.  Contacting them to get such errors corrected is the obvious first step, and if it happens again then a formal complaint would be in order - your dad should keep a close eye on (all of) his credit files to act quickly.

Having said that, credit card companies will often cite credit status/history as a vague catch-all reason for taking action, without this necessarily being related to the data held by CRAs, so unless there's clear evidence of cause and effect, the actions of the two card companies above may not have been in response to the Experian error - people get credit limits reduced all the time....

mcpitman

Deleted_User said:

Make sure that each had the correct addresses registered with each lender or bank, to avoid cross over.

This is probably the key, a friend of mine had a similar situation.

His son was still using the family home address on applications, he was reckless with debt when he lived there and when he moved out.

Due to the same address, initials and surname, the systems were matching the sons debts to the fathers file, despite the DOB being different.

Problem was getting the son to change the addresses as he thought any "problems" would go to his Dad's house and was reluctant to do so for that reason.