Cleaning up a credit report?

[Piglet]

I'm in need of some advice regarding credit reports...

OH and I have both got our credit reports from Experian and whilst mine is "Excellent", his is only "Fair". He's got no defaulted payments but he does have quite a lot of available credit in the form of 4 zero balance credit cards with high credit limits and a number of these and a loan are showing the payment history as "U's" rather than "0's" although they are either dormant accounts or accounts where there are no late payments or defaults.

Any suggestions on how lenders look at these records - are the "U's" problematic and if so how do you persuade the lenders etc. to show "0"'s not "U's"?

He's going to cancel the unused credit card accounts but from my reading of Experian these will still remain on his record for six years - will they show as a £0 credit limit though and will this keep lenders happy as I understand that it's the availability of credit that worries potential lenders?

He has quite a lot of "linked addresses" - a number of which relate to previous businesses addresses with the links put on by Orange PCS which I imagine is previous work phones - is this problematic and if so as he hasn't worked for these employers for four years plus can he ask for them to be removed?

Any other thoughts as to how to clean up the record given that there are no defaults? What profile are the majority of lenders looking for?

Cheers

Piglet

[Phil Hopkins]

The Us stand for 'unused' I *think*. If you close them they'll show on the check as settled and therefore shouldn't have any further effect.

[Piglet]

Cheers Phil - according to Experian U's also indicate that there might be a dispute...

Bumped up for the weekday crew