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Back in November I was the victims of identity theft. Over a 2 day period I had a great many mobile phone contracts & consumer finance contracts taken out in my name.
Most of the finance companies have been good & removed all trace of these contracts from my credit history. Howver, 2 companies have been rubbish:
Creation Consumer Finance
Novuna ConsumerFinance
Whilst they’re conducting their “investigation” they’ve left these accounts on my credit file & they now show as missed payments. They don’t answer or acknowledge emails & I’ve had a few slightly threatening letters. I have actually spoken to their fraud departments who just say “these things take time”… but how much time does it or should it take?
Is there any way I can compel these companies to remove all trace of these fraudulent accounts?
you might find it easiest to approach the credit agencies themselves, rather than the companies, and see if they'll get them removed.
I would say your best approach to compel them would be through use of GDPR regulations. They're illegally storing/processing your data without your consent at the moment. If you throw the book at them through that, it may force them to jump to attention..
honestly though, 4 months isn't a particularly long time. I expect one of these may still be on your file in a years time, some backend worker has a list of accounts to manually work and as processing them doesn't help the company's bottom line, that department will be underfunded.
Raise a formal complaint with them. Failing that then I believe what you need is https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/
you might find it easiest to approach the credit agencies themselves, rather than the companies, and see if they’ll get them removed.
I tried that but these finance companies don’t reply to the credit agencies either 😡
This is what I received:
Further to our previous correspondence about case reference XXXXXXX, we can confirm that Novuna Personal Finance has not supplied a response to the dispute raised on your behalf.
TransUnion is unable to amend an entry without the permission of the organisation responsible for supplying it and as a result, we cannot assist you further with this dispute. We would advise you to contact Novuna Personal Finance directly in order to discuss this matter.
I hadn’t thought about GDPR regulations, but I get the feeling that my request based on GDPR will fall on deaf ears without some sort of substantive legal threat n the background, such as the request coming from a solicitor.
Have you checked Creation Finance reviews - I had the misfortune to deal with them once, never again.
Call them up and raise a complaint. You're a victim of a crime and they're failing to treat you fairly.
The stress, worry, and inconvenience, is causing you material distress and inconvenience. The credit file impacts your legitimate access to credit.
You shouldn't be receiving any arrears letters whilst the agreement is under investigation.
The credit file update can take up to 6 weeks to filter through (once they actually make the change).
You shouldn’t be receiving any arrears letters whilst the agreement is under investigation.
Indeed, I believe it's unlawful to attempt recovery of a debt which is in dispute. Continued attempts to do so is Harassment.
You could try a letter before action threatening suing them for damages for harassment.....
TransUnion is unable to amend an entry without the permission of the organisation responsible for supplying it and as a result, we cannot assist you further with this dispute. We would advise you to contact Novuna Personal Finance directly in order to discuss this matter.
And that's just total BS, they can amend their record if they want to, they're just being arseholes about it.
Even if the credit company doesn't respond to you or the credit reporting agencies you should still be able to get a 'Notice of Dispute' raised which should then be visible on your credit report. This means anywhere you apply for a financial product has to take this dispute into account (manually) rather than an automated system refusing you the product on the basis of the default.
Ask the credit reporting agencies about the above.
As far as I was aware, the credit reporting agencies should also suppress the data after a certain amount of time if they don't get a response out of the credit company confirming data is accurate. I may be wrong about that though.
And that’s just total BS, they can amend their record if they want to, they’re just being arseholes about it.
The credit reporting agencies can't just go and amend the data they get from 3rd party companies. What if the request from the consumer was fraudulent and the data was actually right?
They have a duty to do an investigation though, and as I say if they do not get any response they have to suppress so as not to cause harm to the affacted consumer. I think.
They’re illegally storing/processing your data without your consent at the moment.
Not sure GDPR will get far. They will need to process your personal data to resolve the dispute, and while the dispute is unresolved will need to hold it for the purpose of administering their credit racket should the dispute not be upheld. They can probably argue Legitimate Interest as a reason for processing data in both those cases, so consent would then irrelevant in this case.
Raise a formal complaint with them. Failing that then I believe what you need is https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk
I have raised a formal complaint but they’ve failed to answer. I’ve emailed the ombudsman but technically I’m not a customer of these companies so don’t match their criteria (I haven’t heard back yet so they may help).
You could try a letter before action threatening suing them for damages for harassment…..
I don’t have the means to sue anyone; it’s a toothless threat. They won’t know that but I’m betting they simply won’t respond (or even read the letter).
They have a duty to do an investigation though, and as I say if they do not get any response they have to suppress so as not to cause harm to the affacted consumer. I think.
That’s broadly true. However, because these companies send a missed payment notification every month it removes the suppression.
Bizarrely, despite them seemingly doing **** all the remove the information, Novuna have actually placed a CIFAS marker on my credit reference. So on the one hand they’re acknowledging it’s fraud but in the other hand they’re doing very little to help.
el balfadour is correct, although where I work we call it a 'Notice of Correction'.
If you have a NOC on your bureau record then most finance companies will refer you to their underwriting department for a manual assessment.
In this day and age I can imagine it happens quite frequently.