British Gas have destroyed my partners Credit Score

ManyWays

Advice to ignore your credit score is often incredibly unhelpful. There are problems on her RECORD that need to be sorted.

Thanks for all the input and suggestions so far, what's confusing is her credit report shows a negative mark against every single month since the start of 2025 and for Jan 2026 (13 marks in total) indicating late payments every month against her old address from 15 years ago, her credit rating was Excellent up until those marks started appearing.

I would start from the assumption that the credit record may have been wrong before and may well still be wrong. So discussing what is on it doesnt help.

What matters is to find what has actually happened to the account. BG need to be asked to send a statement of the account since the year before she left that address. At the moment you have no idea if this debt relates to the period before she left or the period after, and her next actions will depend on this.

sourcrates

This should all be put in writing to British Gas, the exact facts need to be established here, and that will not happen at call handler level, its far too complex a situation to be dealt with over the phone, the OP should plead their case in a letter containing as much detail as possible about events to date, what has happened, why you think it is incorrect, and what you want them to do to resolve the issue.

Not withstanding the disputed liability for the debt, there is also the possibility that it may have been statute barred regardless of who was liable, again, the facts need to be established.

powerful_Rogue

ManyWays said:

Advice to ignore your credit score is often incredibly unhelpful. There are problems on her RECORD that need to be sorted.

Thanks for all the input and suggestions so far, what's confusing is her credit report shows a negative mark against every single month since the start of 2025 and for Jan 2026 (13 marks in total) indicating late payments every month against her old address from 15 years ago, her credit rating was Excellent up until those marks started appearing.

I would start from the assumption that the credit record may have been wrong before and may well still be wrong. So discussing what is on it doesnt help.

What matters is to find what has actually happened to the account. BG need to be asked to send a statement of the account since the year before she left that address. At the moment you have no idea if this debt relates to the period before she left or the period after, and her next actions will depend on this.

Why is it 'incredibly unhelpful'? As already pointed out, the score means nothing, it's the information in the actual report that matters.

ManyWays

powerful_Rogue said:

ManyWays said:

Advice to ignore your credit score is often incredibly unhelpful. There are problems on her RECORD that need to be sorted.

Why is it 'incredibly unhelpful'? As already pointed out, the score means nothing, it's the information in the actual report that matters.

Because the person clearly has problems with incorrect information on the report. That is what matters, not a diversion into saying how the score matters less than people think. 

powerful_Rogue

ManyWays said:

powerful_Rogue said:

ManyWays said:

Advice to ignore your credit score is often incredibly unhelpful. There are problems on her RECORD that need to be sorted.

Why is it 'incredibly unhelpful'? As already pointed out, the score means nothing, it's the information in the actual report that matters.

Because the person clearly has problems with incorrect information on the report. That is what matters, not a diversion into saying how the score matters less than people think. 

And that's why my post started with:

For the future, tell her to ignore the credit rating and the score. They are both made up by the credit reference agency and only seen by them and yourself. It's what is in the actual report that makes any difference.

Advising anyone that the credit score/rating is pointless and not seen by anyone and to focus on what the report actually contains is helpful and useful advice - despite what you may think.

Anyway, off topic enough - we'll agree to disagree.

Karsh

sourcrates said:

This should all be put in writing to British Gas, the exact facts need to be established here, and that will not happen at call handler level, its far too complex a situation to be dealt with over the phone, the OP should plead their case in a letter containing as much detail as possible about events to date, what has happened, why you think it is incorrect, and what you want them to do to resolve the issue.

Not withstanding the disputed liability for the debt, there is also the possibility that it may have been statute barred regardless of who was liable, again, the facts need to be established.

After digging through some old documents, we believe the support agent completely missed the mark on this one and completely lead us down a rabbit hole, we've written a letter of complaint to British Gas. Some things we've established since I initially posted this:

- She lived at the address between 2009 and 2011 (a shared student property), during that time, her utility bills were with EON not British Gas, there were no outstanding bills to pay after she moved out.
- There were no negative historical markers on her credit report, so the debts/repayment plan mentioned by the call handler from 2017 against her was probably nonsense (and irrelevant to the main issue).
- The only negative marks on her credit report are the the late payment markers starting from Jan 2025 that British Gas have continued to add against her every month since.

So for whatever reason, they seem to think she is responsible for the utility bills not being paid at an address she hasn't lived in for 15 years; I don't know how that's possible, but I would expect British Gas to get to the bottom of it.

squirrelpie

Karsh said:

sourcrates said:

This should all be put in writing to British Gas, the exact facts need to be established here, and that will not happen at call handler level, its far too complex a situation to be dealt with over the phone, the OP should plead their case in a letter containing as much detail as possible about events to date, what has happened, why you think it is incorrect, and what you want them to do to resolve the issue.

Not withstanding the disputed liability for the debt, there is also the possibility that it may have been statute barred regardless of who was liable, again, the facts need to be established.

After digging through some old documents, we believe the support agent completely missed the mark on this one and completely lead us down a rabbit hole, we've written a letter of complaint to British Gas. Some things we've established since I initially posted this:

- She lived at the address between 2009 and 2011 (a shared student property), during that time, her utility bills were with EON not British Gas, there were no outstanding bills to pay after she moved out.
- There were no negative historical markers on her credit report, so the debts/repayment plan mentioned by the call handler from 2017 against her was probably nonsense (and irrelevant to the main issue).
- The only negative marks on her credit report are the the late payment markers starting from Jan 2025 that British Gas have continued to add against her every month since.

So for whatever reason, they seem to think she is responsible for the utility bills not being paid at an address she hasn't lived in for 15 years; I don't know how that's possible, but I would expect British Gas to get to the bottom of it.

All of which suggests that sourcrates comment is right on the money and you/she need to write a letter to British Gas explaining what you know and asking them to tell you exactly what they [think they] know and pretty please to resolve the problem.

ManyWays

are you saying she has NEVER had an account with British Gas? If thats right, that needs to be her first sentence in every communication. Dont get bogged down by starting to talk about other account before making that clear. Say British Gas needs to produce evidence if they disagree, and if they cant, you want the entry on her credit record deleted as it is incorrect. .

Karsh

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81856227#Comment_81856227

She never had a British Gas account during her time living at the address in question, she did however have an account with them in later years, at a completely different address.

I see on MSE's latest newsletter they posted an article that seems eerily similar to our scenario:

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/latesttip/?anchor=creditfile#creditfile

I'm going to take a guess that it's likely the same problem, British Gas just decided to pick her name for the missed payments, since she was previously an occupier of the property over a decade ago.

ManyWays

Ok then her first sentences need to be "I lived in this property between x and y and during that time we were supplied by EON. I dispute that I owe you any money at all. "