Credit Reference Antagonists

[Levanna]

Credit Reference Agencies are my pet hate of the day. We looked into getting a small but entirely neccesary (important and urgent!) loan over the weekend, only to find that yet again, certain credit reference agencies are storing innacurate, misleading and extremely damaging information about us . Apparently WE have to sort out THEIR mistake (again) and they will happily prolong this process of rectification for a good 28 days. Considering we could have done with this loan yesterday, this is not good! How can they get away with selling false information to companies? Is there no recourse for us? It irritates me so much that we have to waste time and money sorting out problems we have done nothing to incur. Has anyone else had experience of this?

Might be worth looking into the Data Protection Act to see if you can threaten them with breach - one of the principles for those storing personal information is that it must be accurate. Breach of at least part of the Act(tho' can't ofhand remember which) is a criminal offence...and applies to the individual employee responsible as well as the company. An internet search will give you a lot of info. Is it the same agencies each time?

Thanks Crumpet, I'll look into that!
The problem this time is apparently with the same company as last time - though who knows if the others are providing incorrect info about us aswell! Last time we had to dissasociate ourselves from someone we don't even know. This time they have decided we aren't on the electoral role - yet we are, and have been since we moved here - we always return the forms, get charged council tax here, etc....
Thank you so much for your advice - I'll look into it straight away .