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Hi, On Wed, Nov 28, 2007 at 02:18:56PM +0000, Clare Shepherd wrote: > I suppose my beef is with the fact that people's lives can be > affected by their credit rating, when the rating is mistaken. I > live in a house where the previous occupant skipped the country > owing the Inland Revenue, their employer, a bank, and the DHSS. I > was hassled for months and even had phone abuse from the previous > occupants creditors when I stated I didn't know where they were. > Sorry if the touchiness on the subject led to a rant, as you so > accurately said. Yes it can be a hassle, but I think it would be far worse if credit history did not exist as you would have no way to address these issues. Everything that you've experienced would still be happening, but worse because there would be no central store of information so you'd have to correct it in multiple places (many of which you won't know about ahead of time). There are ways and means of sorting this out. Apologies if you have been through all this already, but in the case where you live at an address that previously got bad debt you can put on file that you are not associated with the previous tenants. This can also be done when people at the same address but independent of you cause problems, for example I know a case where a father's problems with the Inland Revenue (as it was) prevented his son from getting a mortgage due to the bad credit record of family member at same address. The son just had to write to the credit reporting agency to state that his finances were not related to the father's, and it was sorted out. If the credit reporting agency did not exist then perhaps the son would have no way to get an affordable mortgage due to how much higher the interest rate would have to be to compensate. Now, some companies still choose to see bad debt at an address to mean that they should not do business with that address, but that is completely their own choice and to say it shouldn't happen is to dictate who they should be allowed to trade with. In individual cases it may not be fair, but that's business, and is actually an argument FOR using credit reporting agencies more. Finally, if you are being harassed by debt collectors, this is illegal. All you need do is write to them to explain why the debt is not owed (in this case because you're not the people they are after) and that they should not contact you again. If they do continue to go after you then this is harassment of a debtor and it is an offence which you can take them to court over. I do not see how any of these circumstances could be improved by doing away with the central records, and in many cases I could imagine it getting worse. Cheers, Andy
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