Lost my mortgage over a missed utility bill

[Icanttakethisanymore]

I’m posting here for traffic so perhaps that makes me immediately unreasonable but hoping someone has sone reassuring experiences they can share.

I was accepted foe a new mortgage just over 6 months ago and for various reasons the sale took ages to go through. We are now making progress but I’ve had to reapply for my mortgage as the offer has expired. Unfortunately in the summer I missed 3 gas bill payments on our second home. It was an administrative cock up, not a lot of money. It’s now sorted and a DD set up so all good…. However, it has created an adverse event on my credit file and the bank has rejected my mortgage application. I’ve spoken then gas company as Experian and it sounds like the gas company are going to remove the adverse event… i’m a bit suspicious that it sounds a bit too easy.

Has anyone had experience of this and managed to get an adverse event removed? I have no defence particularly, it wa just an error, but equally I have no history of not paying my billed or having outstanding balances.

If I can’t get a mortgage I’m going to be absolutely buggered.

Might depend on what the administration error was.

Where it's an error or fault of the company, it'll be removed immediately. No issue. Mine was - removed after a phone call.

If it's the fault or error of the payee I'd imagine it'd take longer. No experience of this though so can't advise on time scale.

I’ll preface this by saying this was 5 years ago, but I got a mortgage with Nationwide despite having 2 missed credit card payments 2 years prior to applying.

It was for a tiny amount of money (around £20) and it was completely my own fault for forgetting to pay so there was no grounds for getting the defaults removed from the file.

Yes, had one removed by VM who placed it on my file in error. My credit score immediately returned to normal.

I received an email from Experian on Christmas day to say that my British Gas account has been removed from my credit file! My mortgage broker has forwarded on my new report to the Bank today so fingers crossed that will go through ok this time

Good luck OP.

Well quite. I don’t see why you expect them to remove it when you didn’t pay?!

Well you’re very lucky then, because other creditors will now not be getting to see the truth.

I'm curious about if this will make any difference to that specific bank - because they already know about the issue. Surely they'd have needed contact from British Gas to say that it was their error, and not yours?

Just deleting the whole account seems odd. I'm surprised (but pleased for you!) that they've agreed to do so, given they have a legal requirement to report accurate and honest information, and are now not doing so - but perhaps that's why they've deleted the whole file. I don't believe they have any obligation to report to the CRAs, but what they choose to report must be accurate, so stopping reporting for you technically might keep them in the gray.

I hope it works out!

Obviously I accept I was at fault but from what I now understand about he process it’s very normal for a provider to remove negative reports on someone’s credit file if they can see the account has been bought up to date. Obviously when the negative report went on, I hadn’t paid and they had no guarantee I would. Now it’s been paid and a DD has been arranged. A real person has also looked at it and can see that I have never defaulted before and the sums of money were tiny.

Obviously if people think I should be prevented from buying a house over one administrative oversight then you are entitled to your opinion.

The broker seems to think it will be ok but I’ll report back.

I didn’t expect anything - I honestly explained the situation and they said they’d remove it because my account was up to date and a DD had already been set up. They can also see I have no history of defaulting. I gather in situations like this it’s common for them to do so.

My mortgage has been approved in case anyone is interested!

My husband and I lost out on a remortgage because I had a default on my file because a final electricity bill was issued a year after we left the supplier. Because I argued it rather than pay it straight away it showed up on my credit file so left me stuffed for a remortgage and we ended up not doing it, selling our house and moving to rented property