Experian has locked my credit score without my permission

Lovedogs12

I wanted to move my credit card balance to a 0% interest and my application was rejected twice by credit cards because they tell me my credit score with Experian is locked. I have never paid for extra facilities with them that would enable me to lock my credit score. I also had to pay to join in order to have a conversation with a human. I have so far spent hours on the phone with them only for them to say they can’t figure out what’s going wrong. They say it’s showing as unlocked their end and my app says unlocked. But credit card co still saying can’t access it. I am really frustrated by this as have purchases I need to make and am being knocked back for credit despite having an excellent credit score! Has anyone else experienced this? 

la531983

Lovedogs12 said:

I wanted to move my credit card balance to a 0% interest and my application was rejected twice by credit cards because they tell me my credit score with Experian is locked.

This sentence makes no sense whatsoever. In the UK the credit score is meaningless, lenders dont see it and lenders make decisions based on the actual data, not a comedy 3 digit score that goes up and down for meaningless reasons.

Lovedogs12

Oh and they have checked out whether there are any issues!on my account  in relation to fraud or identity and nothing there. So I’m left in limbo…

fatbelly

You should not need to pay to access your credit files

The other two have free services in Credit Karma and Clearscore

Experian have abandoned MSE (or the other way around) but they are legally obliged to send a free statutory report

https://www.experian.co.uk/consumer/statutory-report.html

Lovedogs12

Two credit card companies who only use Experian are telling me they cannot progress my application because they are unable to access my credit report through Experian. (Last checked on Thursday). And I had to pay £14.99 to get Credit Expert to check my credit lock toggle was off. (It is!) And there is no other way to speak to anyone at Experian if you don’t join other than snail mail… they have since cancelled the subscription and refunded that money. I cannot get credit because of this and cannot do a balance transfer so in meantime am racking up interest on my original credit card and can’t progress other purchases I want to make. Their technical team are looking into it and say the credit report not locked their end and it must be a technical glitch. Not good enough when I’m left in limbo through no fault of my own.

Lovedogs12

P. S. I have had my credit report sent to me in the post (without charge) and my credit score was excellent. No unexpected anomalies which makes this even more confusing. It’s not my access that’s the problem, it’s external credit card companies!

Nasqueron

Please stop referring to an "excellent" credit score - in the UK you do not have a credit score - lenders never use, or even see, the gimmick score.

Issue a formal complaint to Experian and let them investigate 

MattMattMattUK

Lovedogs12 said:

P. S. I have had my credit report sent to me in the post (without charge) and my credit score was excellent. 

Your score is meaningless, made up, pointless and most importantly, it is never seen by any lenders. 

Lovedogs12 said:

No unexpected anomalies which makes this even more confusing. It’s not my access that’s the problem, it’s external credit card companies!

It is an issue in the system that Experian will have to resolve, you need to raise a formal complaint with them:
https://www.experian.co.uk/consumer/product-factsheets/complaint-handling-procedure.pdf

Lovedogs12 said:

Two credit card companies who only use Experian are telling me they cannot progress my application because they are unable to access my credit report through Experian. (Last checked on Thursday). And I had to pay £14.99 to get Credit Expert to check my credit lock toggle was off. (It is!) And there is no other way to speak to anyone at Experian if you don’t join other than snail mail… they have since cancelled the subscription and refunded that money. I cannot get credit because of this and cannot do a balance transfer

You could apply with a lender who does not use Experian. Somewhere on here in the banking section is a list of which financial institutions use which CRAs.

Lovedogs12 said:

so in meantime am racking up interest on my original credit card and can’t progress other purchases I want to make. Their technical team are looking into it and say the credit report not locked their end and it must be a technical glitch. Not good enough when I’m left in limbo through no fault of my own.

Whilst Experian should resolve this issue as quickly as reasonably possible it is not their fault that you have chosen to carry debt and want to accumulate more. You cannot guarantee that new low/no interest credit will be available in the future, so you cannot blame Experian for that either. 

Raise a formal complaint, they will get it resolved as we have seen other cases of this on here before, but it will take a couple of weeks. 

Lovedogs12

Nasqueron said:

Please stop referring to an "excellent" credit score - in the UK you do not have a credit score - lenders never use, or even see, the gimmick score.

Issue a formal complaint to Experian and let them investigate 

Clearly I’m not an idiot and have made a formal complaint which has been running for three weeks without progress hence my post seeking anyone else who has encountered a similar problem. If lenders don’t get to see this credit score or report or whatever, why are two lenders telling me that this is the problem?! Experian themselves have confirmed this issue also? I have a copy of own report which shows no anomalies whatsoever. This is what I assume the lenders are referring to so therefore they must access this info in some form. Otherwise what is the point of Experian?? 

DE_612183

I presume what is happening is that whichever credit card company it is contacting experian for data about a specific individual - the data they are unable to extract from their databases - could be a number of reasons for this ranging from a technical glitch to incorrect data - for example if you submitted an application with a different DOB from the one experian hold - they would quite rightly send back to the CC company - "no match found", and the CC company would then quite rightly refuse your application.

Following on from this, if they get a number of applications trying to access incorrect data, they then might decide to "lock" that record as there could be an issue that needs to be sorted.

I think the advise about trying with other companies is the right way to go, if you can't wait for experiean to sort out he issue.

Nasqueron

Lovedogs12 said:

Nasqueron said:

Please stop referring to an "excellent" credit score - in the UK you do not have a credit score - lenders never use, or even see, the gimmick score.

Issue a formal complaint to Experian and let them investigate 

Clearly I’m not an idiot and have made a formal complaint which has been running for three weeks without progress hence my post seeking anyone else who has encountered a similar problem. If lenders don’t get to see this credit score or report or whatever, why are two lenders telling me that this is the problem?! Experian themselves have confirmed this issue also? I have a copy of own report which shows no anomalies whatsoever. This is what I assume the lenders are referring to so therefore they must access this info in some form. Otherwise what is the point of Experian?? 

The report is important, the score is not.

Experian have 2 purposes - 1 to record your credit history to provide data to firms, 2 to create services to sell to you e.g. the credit scoring

If you have a formal complaint, unfortunately you have to wait for them to respond to it within the deadline (8 weeks) before you can escalate it to the FOS. Sadly this is how financial services work, there are rarely shortcuts