Incorrect default on credit report affecting mortgage application - advice needed

Billiamnewton

Hi,

My wife and I are in the process of buying a house, but have hit a problem in that our mortgage application has been rejected. Our broker has flagged that this is due to defaults which have been put on my wife's credit report by E.On.

These are incorrect as neither of us have ever been customers with E.On - our electricity and gas is in my name and with Octopus. The account relates to a previous rental property we lived in, but we were registered with Octopus the entire time we lived there and paying our bills with them. In addition to this, the dates that are listed for the default are when we had moved out of the property - we have both an end of tenancy agreement for the old property and also our new tenancy agreement for the next  place we lived to confirm this.

We hadn't heard anything about this from E.On until a couple of weeks ago, when coincidentally my wife got a letter from an agency who have been sold the debt by E.On. There have been no letters, emails or phone calls up to this point, and we don't know how they've got our current address.

We have disputed this with the agency and shared our tenancy agreements, and they've agreed that the debt isn't ours - they've raised a dispute and my wife has done the same.

My wife has tried to contact E.On about this, in particular to find out where they got her details or how they were able to set up an account without her permission, but they're refusing to talk about it as the debt has now been sold. They've also said that they won't comply with a Subject Access request with relation to this, and so we're looking at our options for reporting this to the ICO.

The problem we have is that anything we need to do in order to rectify this seems like it will take some time to resolve, even though all of the errors are down to E.On. Is there anything anyone can recommend to hopefully speed things up, and avoid losing this property.

Thanks!

sourcrates

You must first dispute this with EON, register a formal complaint with them.

They logged the incorrect data, they are responsible for its removal.

They have 8 weeks in which to issue a final response, you can then involve the energy ombudsman, or the ICO, whichever is appropriate.

jackjones01

You could try asking for the right to rectification they have to respond within 30 days: 

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-resources/individual-rights/individual-rights/right-to-rectification/#:~:text=rectify%20personal%20data%3F-,What%20is%20the%20right%20to%20rectification%3F,the%20purposes%20for%20the%20processing.