A question about : Experian credit score
I've posted about my friend and her mad ideas before but I have a question.
Friend got into debt (stupid spending on credit cards/next account/ hire purchase) lost her job and couldn't afford the repayments. After I found out we phoned CCCS together and they came up with a debt payment plan. Friend still has a few years to go on it.
Recently friend decided she needs a new car. She has money in a credit union account (about Ј400 - Christmas gifts and money the DMP budgeted for her to save for emergencies). She can get a loan for 3X that amount from her credit union.
Friend decided she wants a car on finance so she made an account on experian and none of her debt is on it! No mention of the DMP even though she pays it every month, the only creditors listed are O2 (she has a cheap contract phone) and HBOS for her current account which has a Ј50 overdraft facility.
I've talked her out of the loan as it is against the terms of her DMP but I can't explain why none of her debt is on this credit file. She owes money to HBOS for 2 loans, black horse finance for a car loan, tesco credit card, new look store card, oasis store card?, and Next.
Currently her credit score is 914 on this report - I've learned from here that this means nothing. Is it possible for my friend to apply for credit and get it? I'm worried that she will do something stupid while still on her DMP. She's not loving life on benefits as she likes the nicer things in life, I'm worried that one store card will lead to another and she'll end up in even more debt than she started with!
Best answers:
- Has your friend changed address / name? Did she input all of these? She needs to ensure she has put her full address and name history into her Experian account to show all debts.
Has she checked call credit and Equifax? Not all creditors update teh debts on all 3 CRA's and creditors choose to use any of these three main ones to search when someone applies for credit.
Although Experian does tend to be the most common one so I would expect more to show. - She said that the website shows all of her old addresses going back to when she stayed at home, I've known her since we were young and she's never changed her name or used a different name that I know of. When we were sending statements off to CCCS they all had her name as I know her on them.
- Foxy that's exactly the stupid thing I mean!
I am not convinced she has control over herself all the time, my older sister has bi polar disorder and some of the things my sister does due to her illness are things my friend does too. I have encouraged her to see a doctor in the past but she's scared of being "registered as a psycho" even though I've told her my sisters never experienced anything negative as a result of her mental health problems. - Hi GlasweJen,
I can see why you would be concerned if your friends debts are not appearing on her Experian report.
As Giggles_Fairy has said she would need to make sure her past addresses are recorded in her profile, as the report will only show information in her name at the addresses listed in your profile.
I understand your friend has said that all her old addresses are listed, however she would need to be sure that these are not just showing in the linked address section but are in the profile itself. How to do this is covered here.
If here current address has been added to her profile under an unusual variation this could also stop information from being retrieved, so this would be worth checking.
If she has changed her name at all then she would also need to make sure an alias is added to her report so that information in her previous name will be retrieved. More on how to do this here.
In regard to the DMP National Debtline have a lot of really useful information here about running DMP's that may help your friend.
I certainly hope you can help your friend come to the best decision for her in this.
Kind Regards Neil - Thanks Neil, I'll pass this onto her.
- 809 reads