Credit reports and mobile phone companies
Discussion
That wouldn't surprise me, but I don't know why they've queried the credit report on this address. Neither I nor the Mrs have ever used them and we've been here 8 years.
Just had an e-mail to say the phone's been dispatched and will be with me tomorrow so they must have just objected to the way I'd put my name.
Just had an e-mail to say the phone's been dispatched and will be with me tomorrow so they must have just objected to the way I'd put my name.
P-Jay said:
or should I be checking my credit rating and seeing if EE will give me a reason - Few, if any business will give a reason for declining to do business with someone, I've never really understood why, but they don't - chances are you'll get a "computer says no" answer anyway.
The reason they don't tell you the specific reason is because it's a deterrent to stop people applying again with a fraudulent application in which they have modified the issue (e.g. by inflating their salary).Sarnie said:
All three bureau's hold differing levels of information. Noddle is via Callcredit so it may that the CCJ is registered via equifax or experian, so you would need to check all three to be sure.
That's how it is for defaults not CCJs.CCJs are listed on a public register (Register of Judgments, Orders and Fines) which the CRAs can use.
Edited by bugmenot on Tuesday 8th April 22:52
Credit ratings are fallible. One problem is if you've no credit history because you've not used credit - e.g. CC paid off in full every month and mortgage with your bank, who don't share that hi score data with anyone else (why would they?). No history seems to be worse than a mildly impaired one, presumably because they've no data except the electoral roll and perhaps some utility bills to go on.
PS I discovered this when trying to take out two £10 / month mobile contracts for my daughters and was turned down - eventually I discovered it was because my (good) history was invisible to the agencies so they assumed the worst.
PS I discovered this when trying to take out two £10 / month mobile contracts for my daughters and was turned down - eventually I discovered it was because my (good) history was invisible to the agencies so they assumed the worst.
Edited by Revisitph on Wednesday 9th April 08:25
Edited by Revisitph on Wednesday 9th April 08:37
Revisitph said:
Credit ratings are fallible. One problem is if you've no credit history because you've not used credit - e.g. CC paid off in full every month and mortgage with your bank, who don't share that hi score data with anyone else (why would they?). No history seems to be worse than a mildly impaired one, presumably because they've no data except the electoral roll and perhaps some utility bills to go on.
Paying off your credit card STATEMENT in full every month does get reported and it will build up a solid history of repayments and of being able to manage credit.Paying off your credit card before the statement is generated will not - because your credit report will appear as though you don't even use the card.
bugmenot said:
Paying off your credit card STATEMENT in full every month does get reported and it will build up a solid history of repayments and of being able to manage credit.
Paying off your credit card before the statement is generated will not - because your credit report will appear as though you don't even use the card.
20+ years of solid CC history don't appear on my record - is it because my card (though it is VISA) is branded with the bank's brand and paid off automatically from an account with that bank as soon as the statement is generated? Paying off your credit card before the statement is generated will not - because your credit report will appear as though you don't even use the card.
Revisitph said:
20+ years of solid CC history don't appear on my record - is it because my card (though it is VISA) is branded with the bank's brand and paid off automatically from an account with that bank as soon as the statement is generated?
My Santander credit card that's paid by DD from my Santander bank account shows up on Noodle.eybic said:
With regards to the 6 year thing in relation to defaults, are they no longer applicable/ counted after 6 years? Seems a bit strange if that's the case as you could in theory avoid them for 6 years and not have any comeback.
This is essentially the rub of it - the whole 'credit' market in the UK is based on checks and balances to use an Americanism a long time ago someone decided that 6 years history was a fair amount of time for someone's history to be recorded. It's enough history to give a lender a very good idea of a applicants current situation and how they've conducted themselves in the past, but it means individuals aren't carrying a 'black mark' for the rest of their lives - after all, lots of people, including myself did stupid things in their early 20's - a few cheques got 'lost in the post' and a few organisations didn't get notified when I moved house - now in my mid 30's I'm well past all that - but would it be fair to digressions from 15 years ago dragged up? I used to chase debt as part of my job with RBS.
As for the 'no comeback' thing, it really depends on the lender and how far they're willing to go. They can of course register a default - I would guess about 50% of defaulters will come out of the woodwork years after you last heard from them begging to pay because their mortgage broker has told them to, they can even go for a CCJ - they stay on record for 6 years after they're filed so its like re-setting the clock for them. Once that has happened they can appoint bailiffs to attempt to recover the debt and finally can even apply to make you bankrupt.
But for the most part it never happens, most creditors will default and pass it on to a debt recovery agency - and they're useless - they'll send a letter once a quarter via the cheapest UK Mail method, on the cheapest paper you've ever seen - they literally will put 3p of effort into it, then pass it onto another and another until the 6 years are up and it's like it never happened - the defaulter always owes the money - but after 6 years of non-contact they've used all their legal avenues to enforce the debt - for the original lender it's long been written off as bad debt and off-set against profits for tax purposes.
Revisitph said:
bugmenot said:
Paying off your credit card STATEMENT in full every month does get reported and it will build up a solid history of repayments and of being able to manage credit.
Paying off your credit card before the statement is generated will not - because your credit report will appear as though you don't even use the card.
20+ years of solid CC history don't appear on my recordPaying off your credit card before the statement is generated will not - because your credit report will appear as though you don't even use the card.
As mentioned by someone above, different financial institutions use different credit reporting agencies. ABC Bank Ltd may only report to Experian, so your Equifax and CallCredit credit files won't have any mention of your ABC loan, ABC credit card nor ABC overdraft. On the other hand, some financial institutions report to all 3 CRAs, hence why it's important to get all 3 credit files in order to get a true picture of your credit worthiness.
All that jazz said:
Revisitph said:
bugmenot said:
Paying off your credit card STATEMENT in full every month does get reported and it will build up a solid history of repayments and of being able to manage credit.
Paying off your credit card before the statement is generated will not - because your credit report will appear as though you don't even use the card.
20+ years of solid CC history don't appear on my recordPaying off your credit card before the statement is generated will not - because your credit report will appear as though you don't even use the card.
As mentioned by someone above, different financial institutions use different credit reporting agencies. ABC Bank Ltd may only report to Experian, so your Equifax and CallCredit credit files won't have any mention of your ABC loan, ABC credit card nor ABC overdraft. On the other hand, some financial institutions report to all 3 CRAs, hence why it's important to get all 3 credit files in order to get a true picture of your credit worthiness.
I thought it worked a little differently, I thought that when you had a loan etc each of the agencies were able to find out and record information about it, but that when you tried to take out new credit then lender just used ONE of the agencies to do the check. Each agency might put different emphasis on different aspects of your profile to determine your score. Therefore if there was an error on your profile you would need to get the lender to update the details to ALL 3 agencies to avoid problems in the future.
Can someone please clarify?
Totally bonkers that such an incredibly important aspect of modern life is so opaque and misunderstood.
Can someone please clarify?
Totally bonkers that such an incredibly important aspect of modern life is so opaque and misunderstood.
Creditors when assessing an application will generally only use one CRA, as there aint any point paying for 3 lots of the same information. There are exceptions though.
But when reporting loan payment historys, they generally provide to all 3. This again is not always the case but generally applies.
The CRA's themselves share data amongst themselves also. So if a mobile phone company would only report to Equifax, then Equifax would share that with Experian and Call Credit.
But when reporting loan payment historys, they generally provide to all 3. This again is not always the case but generally applies.
The CRA's themselves share data amongst themselves also. So if a mobile phone company would only report to Equifax, then Equifax would share that with Experian and Call Credit.
TallMark said:
I thought it worked a little differently, I thought that when you had a loan etc each of the agencies were able to find out and record information about it, but that when you tried to take out new credit then lender just used ONE of the agencies to do the check. Each agency might put different emphasis on different aspects of your profile to determine your score. Therefore if there was an error on your profile you would need to get the lender to update the details to ALL 3 agencies to avoid problems in the future.
Can someone please clarify?
Totally bonkers that such an incredibly important aspect of modern life is so opaque and misunderstood.
Basically it does, but you occasionally get little glitches in the system which mean that something might be recorded on one and not the other, but it's incredibly rare. Can someone please clarify?
Totally bonkers that such an incredibly important aspect of modern life is so opaque and misunderstood.
The reason why it's so opaque is that all 3 are now making lots of money upselling services to consumers and this often is at odds with their other clients, the lenders.
Take for example RBS (or how it was in 2009 when I left) RBS use Experian for credit searches and reporting, okay some of the guys in the anti-fraud teams have access to the others, but by and large they only use Experian. Considering all their sub-brands this is a HUGE account for Experian.
So when someone in Natwest wants to sell someone a mortgage, the decision is partly based on their Experian report and no other credit report. They don't want to make a large lend like that based on a perfect Experian report, only to find that the customer has defaulted on several other commitments from lenders who happen to only use CallCredit - that's unthinkable really, you're turning credit reporting into total pot luck and frankly it wouldn't take long before mortgage brokers worked out which banks used which and put forward customers who they knew would score well with X and not Y.
So to do business with lenders, they all share data - their product to lenders isn't the information per-se, but the method it's delivered and the cost.
They also take raw data - a list of who a customer has debt with, and a string of numbers which say how well it's paid - they DON'T take a score. They assign their own based on this data and other factors surrounding the purpose of the debt and affordability - this high level underwriting is financial alchemy and they put huge amounts of time and effort into refining their criteria to have the best level of risk / profit / bad debt.
From the consumer point of view, if they were honest about that they would have a hard time selling anything over and above raw data for £2 (as determined by the data protection act) so they've sort of invented the idea of a universal score and created lots of smoke and mirrors to make it seem far more complex than it is.
In reality a credit report holds a lot of data but it's pretty straight forward.
It contains a 'confirmed' set of current details - so name, address, dob, etc.
Then there's a list of former addresses and dates of moving - these are really messy because while some people go to great effort to tell everyone they have dealings with they've moved, some only tell some, some don't tell any at all until they notice a missing bill and you can end up with dozens if not hundreds of moves. Proper messy.
Then there's the legal stuff, bankruptcies, CCJ's, NOCs and Fraud Markers.
Then there's a list of current borrowing, who the lender is, the type of debt (personal loan, HP, CC, store card, catalogue etc) the outstand amount (calculated differently depending on type of debt) and most importantly a list of 12 numbers - these are 'reminders' they should be 12 zeros in a row, if you miss a payment for whatever reason you get a 1, miss two you get a 2 etc etc - they drop off after 12 months, but there's also a record of the highest number since inception they only ever go up to 8 which is classed as a default - although lenders can default at 3 or 6 months according to their individual rules so it can go 1, 2, 3, 8 etc - you never see a 7.
After that it's the same list for settled agreements.
Nothing dates back more than 6 years, the Data Protection Act says that after 6 years anyone can ask for any data on them to be removed, so they just take it off after 6 years - so if you get a 'black mark' for something after 6 it's like it never happened.
P-Jay said:
TallMark said:
I thought it worked a little differently, I thought that when you had a loan etc each of the agencies were able to find out and record information about it, but that when you tried to take out new credit then lender just used ONE of the agencies to do the check. Each agency might put different emphasis on different aspects of your profile to determine your score. Therefore if there was an error on your profile you would need to get the lender to update the details to ALL 3 agencies to avoid problems in the future.
Can someone please clarify?
Totally bonkers that such an incredibly important aspect of modern life is so opaque and misunderstood.
Basically it does, but you occasionally get little glitches in the system which mean that something might be recorded on one and not the other, but it's incredibly rare.... Can someone please clarify?
Totally bonkers that such an incredibly important aspect of modern life is so opaque and misunderstood.
Creditors when assessing an application will generally only use one CRA, as there aint any point paying for 3 lots of the same information. There are exceptions though.
But when reporting loan payment historys, they generally provide to all 3. This again is not always the case but generally applies.
The CRA's themselves share data amongst themselves also. So if a mobile phone company would only report to Equifax, then Equifax would share that with Experian and Call Credit.
But when reporting loan payment historys, they generally provide to all 3. This again is not always the case but generally applies.
The CRA's themselves share data amongst themselves also. So if a mobile phone company would only report to Equifax, then Equifax would share that with Experian and Call Credit.
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