Moneysavingexpert.com/ Your Credit Rating discussion area

loolabelle

If someone could give me some advice on this matter i would be forever grateful, ok here goes, i had a loan with Welcome which i defaulted on, this was then sold to 1st credit, now the amount 1st credit were asking for (and it's worth mentioning i was in a situation at this point whereby i could contribute to a monthly payment) seemed absolutely absurd, so i came onto this site, got the relevant letters to send to request a statement of the account and a copy of the credit agreement, and absolutely no-one got back to me, great as i don't hear from them anymore, however the debt both from welcome finance and 1st credit are showing up on my report, does anyone know what i have to do next to get this removed, or indeed can i get it removed?? or do i have to wait 5 more years???

Cardinal_Biggles

I must be getting too long in the tooth to keep up! I'm at that age when my mortgage is paid off ( some years ago), no outstanding debt at all, not even for annual insurance policies. I pay off my credit card balance every month, with a very healthy credit line on the cc - just recently increased in fact - to reflect a good managerial salary. No dependants, regular Bills paid by standing order...... and been with my bank for 40 years of trouble free banking.

You would think everything in the garden would be lovely..... but god help those who are struggling if my recent experience is typical!

I havent had a personal loan since the 1980s, but now Ive got a new line of early-pension income just beginning to come in from a previous employer, and having just paid rather more than I originally intended for a new kitchen to be fitted, I thought Id use the new line of income to preserve my buffer savings and borrow a few thou to change my car. Wish I hadnt bothered!!

Despite the apparent headline rates of low interest and what appears to be finance providers giving the appearance of hunting for business, my experience is the opposite.

Firstly during a recent house move, the utilities company got the meter reading and bills incorrect, giving me 10x my usual bill for combined energy. Eventually corrected after months and months of call centre rubbish, but meanwhile red flags placed all over my credit file I have no doubt, despite it being their error. First Ouch. I cant believe how easy it is in the UK for someone to demand money, engage debt collectors and slur your good name in CRAs without any foundation whatsoever, and as a result of their own mistake. It verges on demanding money with menaces. Pay this £6,000 energy bill or you wont get credit again....

Having recently moved, being fed up with junk mail and deciding not to vote in the last election I haven't registered to vote in my new address yet nor do I particularly want to. Second Ouch.

The final nail in my credit coffin was the actual process of trying to apply for a loan. When you do it on line, the sites all say that rates are individual. So how do you compare without actually applying? Starting with M&S I spent ten mins wading through the screens to discover that I needed to be a M&S store card holder. No problem, I applied for their very very expensive apr storecard and re-applied. Only to be told I had to have had the card for 6 months before I could be eligible! doh. On the same day Sainsbury's headline rate of 7.8% ended up as 9.1% as a I didn't have a Nectar card, and my bank - the one with 40 years of history and six very full current and savings accounts of mine on their systems came back with 16% apr!!!. Same day, I therefore applied to Santander, who to their credit came back with 7.9% for a £12,000 loan, as was their headline.

However, two days later, as Santander contract arrives in the post. I decide that I don't really need £12,000 around half of that will do. Ring them, and after 30 minutes waiting for a misnomered "customer services operative" (ha!!) Im still listening to dodgy music and "your call is important to us,......" I guess its important as they think Im paying 10p a minute (fortunately I looked on 'SayNoTo0870' first he he). Anyway, while waiting I did Sainsbury's again with my gleaming new Nectar card, got to the end of the application and they confirmed the 7.8% rate for me that I wanted. I hung up on the late and not lamented Santander and, as requested by the website checked my details on the screens - there were a few of them covering all the points in my personal details - and pressed the accept button.

At which point the web site crashes and tells me its timed out. No it wont let me start again, even with a new browser window. I ring them up. Go through the whole process again on the phone. Err...."we are having a couple of problems Ill call you back".... Despite having had 7.8% confirmed just before it crashed, back comes 9.1% - as there had now been several scans of my credit file. the fact that three or four of them were their own did not seem to matter!!

Back to Sanatander. Got through quickly this time. No they cant change the loan to a smaller amount without a whole new application, which will be yet another swipe on the Credit scoring scoreboard and probably a higher interest rate.

I now give up. I dont have the time, nor need the hassle. With £200bn of our money slushing around in the banks, and bonuses being paid left right and centre it seems that good credit basic principles have long flown the nest and you are lucky to borrow even at nine times the typical savings rate. MAybe if I was an unmarried mother in a US trailer park Id find it easier......?

I'm going to use some of my savings after all..... sod the loan sharks - oops, I mean banking industry and Ill save myself a thousand pounds of interest charges over the three years.

Just to complete my day, I thought Id better see just what my credit score looks like after all this IDE activity on it by the banks. CreditExpert just completed the goodness of the day for me. They make a considered point of not telling you how much their service actually costs before you apply for it. Insult to injury! There is a Free 30 day report pushed at you all over the site, but no mention of charges thereafter. And I suspect that the credit score part of their product range is chargeable - but this is ambivalent on their site, and I don't know how much it costs, and I only know it from previous posts I've seen on this forum. Anyway, as a web trader using distance selling marketing tools this looks rather unethical to me, and I wont stand for it. Ill get my £2 legal standard report (hidden away on other parts of the site) and be done with it.

God help anyone who is unemployed, young, or struggling with a mortgage in this country. No wonder the immigration statistics today show a net outflow of talent from these shores......

Time for a soothing cuppa and a Rich Tea....... rant now ending........ but I do want my £200bn back. Al Murray is right!

And just how DO you compare interest rates in a market with personal APRs as te norm without destroying your credit score in the process????:mad:

djsnakehipschris

Hi all,

Is there a definitive list of application types (credit searches) that may appear on your credit file and which affect your credit score (when applying for credit)? I am looking at my credit file so I can time my next application, but need to calculate when the last credit footprints go over the 6 month cut off.

So far I have these, and using my deduction whether it has an impact (I may be wrong so please correct me!):

Credit Report - No affect
Unrecorded Enquiry - No affect
Insurance Quotation - Credit footprint
Employment Check - No affect
Credit Card - Credit footprint
Identification: Generic Check - No affect
Identification: Money Laundering Prevention - No affect
Personal Loan - Credit footprint

Thanks for any contributions!

Chris

djsnakehipschris

Frugaldom wrote: »

With regards to the above, I have just checked my file and there's a search on it from August 2007 that I did not authorise, nor have I any idea why the search was done. Would Camelot do a credit search before debiting a card for buying lottery tickets??? I am extremely curious about this as the only reason given on the report is, " unrecorded enquiry". Please can someone tell me what that means? Thank you

I had the same when I signed up to play the lottery online by DD.

From my understanding unrecorded enquiries will not show up to lenders when applying for credit. Camelot could be using experian to validate that you are a real person and that you live at that address. My organisation uses experian for that purpose.

Hope that helps!

Chris

jon_boy75

"What a racket! A tale of minor woe to warn the unsuspecting......"

I feel your pain Cardinal Biggles...it's a joke, the whole lot

NeverEnough

jon_boy75 wrote: »

"What a racket! A tale of minor woe to warn the unsuspecting......"

I feel your pain Cardinal Biggles...it's a joke, the whole lot

Cardinal Biggles, I know exactly how you feel as our situation is similar in so many ways....how can the UK have degenerated into such a financial third-world mess with protected racketeers (sorry, I mean bankers) fleecing us and damaging us wherever possible:eek:

Banks get away with anything, as do the CRAs - and you have no rights at all, whatever they may claim - Experian have maintained completely inaccurate, rubbish records on me for several years now even though I have disputed the blatantly wrong information.....reason given is that "their client" (the bank or other company) has to respond and agree to remove the wrong info. If they don't, you're snookered. My credit report has over 30 duplicated footprints in the "linked" section from First Plus from years ago, all put through on the same day!! Amazing!! Plus I've had numerous sex changes throughout the report - several entries calling me "Mr", changing the spelling of my surname, etc etc. And so it goes on and on. And on.

The only explanation that Experian will allow you to add about the rubbish they write about you, is to put an obscurely vague paragraph miles away from where anyone could see it, stating that the accuracy of the information is disputed - you can't add your own wording even though they say you can. And the wrong info and sex changes remain on your record forever, unless the "client" says its ok to correct their drivel.......:mad:
These CRAs are the scum of the earth, just like the loan sharks, bent bankers and others of their ilk :eek:(rant over)

Experian_company_representative

NeverEnough wrote: »

Cardinal Biggles, I know exactly how you feel as our situation is similar in so many ways....how can the UK have degenerated into such a financial third-world mess with protected racketeers (sorry, I mean bankers) fleecing us and damaging us wherever possible:eek:

Banks get away with anything, as do the CRAs - and you have no rights at all, whatever they may claim - Experian have maintained completely inaccurate, rubbish records on me for several years now even though I have disputed the blatantly wrong information.....reason given is that "their client" (the bank or other company) has to respond and agree to remove the wrong info. If they don't, you're snookered. My credit report has over 30 duplicated footprints in the "linked" section from First Plus from years ago, all put through on the same day!! Amazing!! Plus I've had numerous sex changes throughout the report - several entries calling me "Mr", changing the spelling of my surname, etc etc. And so it goes on and on. And on.

The only explanation that Experian will allow you to add about the rubbish they write about you, is to put an obscurely vague paragraph miles away from where anyone could see it, stating that the accuracy of the information is disputed - you can't add your own wording even though they say you can. And the wrong info and sex changes remain on your record forever, unless the "client" says its ok to correct their drivel.......:mad:
These CRAs are the scum of the earth, just like the loan sharks, bent bankers and others of their ilk :eek:(rant over)

If there is inaccurate on your credit report you have a legal right to query the information via the credit reference agency. It will then be flagged as unreliable and the provider contacted to verify your comments. If you've done this with Experian and you still have issues, I'd be interested to review your correspondence. Perhaps you contact us via the link in my profile and provide more information so we can look at this for you. Inaccurate information is in no-one's interest - not yours, ours or the companies that use the data.

To answer another post above, insurance quotations only leave footprints that are visible to lenders and can be used in credit scoring if you indicated that you wanted to pay your premium in instalments (ie are also applying for credit).

James Jones

FoxtrotUniformCharlieKilo

#483

Cardinal Biggles



Contact the CRA and ask them to query any searches that have been duplicated by the Lenders.

emma10000

Hi, just too let you know that "linked address" will always show onyour file. Mine is still showing on there even though I moved 14 years ago. It shows under linked address. Hope this is helpful

shazzm

Reading some of these posts has got me worrying.

Due to family issues, I had to take out my first (and hopefully) my last personal loan. Naively, I approached my bank first (first mistake). Despite a good credit history, due to visa restrictions, I couldn't get a loan for the full amount I wanted. The consultant suggested I go ahead with the loan application for a reduced amount and in the meantime investigate other loan providers. He said the application process could take some time (due to layoffs etc.) so he would call me later in the week to confirm whether I still wanted to go ahead with everything or whether I had found an alternative.

Thanks to Money Saving Expert, I found a much better alternative that same day and was approved for a loan for the full amount at much lower interest with Sainsbury's. The next day, I called the bank to stop my application but had to leave a message. To cut a long story short, after several unreturned phone calls and in person visits to the bank over a week, the bank said they couldn't stop the application and could tell me nothing further about it. I said I wanted to cancel but apparently this couldn't be done once it was being processed. The consultant I dealt with wasn't there anymore.

Two weeks later and still no returned calls, I went in person again and was told that whoever was processing the loan needed more information about why I needed the money. At this point I made a complaint and have been dealing with that department since. They suggested I check my credit report and needless to say a check has been made from the bank. I asked for this to be removed as it had been made after I had tried several times to stop the process but they said there was nothing they could do as the process can't be stopped once it has started. Despite relaying what the consultant had told me, apparently this is standard and I was misinformed. They said these details are in the terms and conditions but I can't find anything in the documentation I signed that says anything about cancelling an application. There's only stuff in there about cancelling a loan (and I never got that far).

So now I'm stuck with extra checks on my report which make it look like I'm trying to borrow lots of money in a short space of time. Is this right? From the sounds of things from the posts above, this could mean trouble for me later on.