Default removal confusion.

Hello everyone,

I have recently been speaking to a financial advisor about buying my first property, I'm self-employed so was worried I'd really struggle but my IFA thinks that my books look good and I should be able to get a mortgage based on them. Good news!

I've had clearscore for a while and whilst I know the score itself is relatively useless, it showed as me having no defaults or CCJ's etc, wonderful.

However I then got a call from Lowell Group to tell me I owe them £100 odd pounds for an old BT account, very odd as I don't remember owing them any money and I haven't had any paper correspondence from Lowell or BT on the matter.

I speak to my Dad and he has a letter from October 2018 from Lowell's saying they have bought the debt, this sent to his address which I have nothing registered at and he has only lived at for a few months.

I tell Lowells that I want to speak to BT as I don't want to pay if I don't owe it, but that also I don't want a default on my account when I'm trying to get a mortgage, the call handler informs me a default has already been applied,


I signed up with Equifax and I have a default on my account from BT and then moved to the Lowell group from February 2017! Absolutely gutted as we have had to pull out of the potential house purchase, my credit file is otherwise perfect.


I've been through the Equifax process to find out from BT what the debt was for and they couldn't tell me. I then emailed the BT CEO and was given an executive complaints handler, they have shown me a final month bill before I cancelled my account and it shows I owed some money, however I have never seen this bill and called BT when cancelling the contract and was told I didn't owe them any money.

I'm arguing with BT that they shouldn't have sold my details to a DCA and also I wasn't informed of the default by either BT or Lowells, also that the default was applied without me being more than 3 months in arrears and that it was added more than a year after the supposed debt.

BT are saying that because the debt is more than 200 days old they can't recall it and basically I have to go through Lowells.

I have since been in touch with Lowells and they are saying because BT applied the original default that only they can remove it and I would have to issue BT an SAR to get the default notice etc.

So my first question I guess is how to respond to this, is it true that only BT can remove the default?

I totally understand that your CRF should be an accurate representation of your credit handling history but I genuinely wasn't informed of the debt until more than a year after the default was applied, which itself was more than a year after the supposed debt.

Cheers.