As every company uses a different credit scoring procedure, pinpointing how any given one will view you is impossible. Yet keeping an eye on your general credit healthiness is important.
You’ve a statutory right under the Consumer Credit Act 1974, to write and get your files, yet this is slow and costs £2 per agency (see the officially checking credit files note). Instead, there’s a loophole to instantly get more detailed info online for free.
How many and how often?
If possible, check all three agencies, there’s no harm, as while doing a check is recorded on your file it does NOT add a ‘search’ so has no impact and an error on any one can cause you a problem.It’s worth doing a check-up roughly every year to 18 months.
A trick to get every file online for free…
Credit ratings have become big business. In the old days the agencies made their money from flogging their data to lenders, but our desire for credit means they spotted a lucrative market to sell it back to us too. Luckily, this leaves open a nice loophole.
The top end service offered is ‘credit monitoring’, which costs around £70 a year (find out more about other credit services). To tempt you in, they offer free month long trials, which require you to set up a Direct Debit or regular credit card payment. Of course, the aim is you’ll not bother to cancel it when the month’s up so it still drips from your account.
The trick…
As part of the monitoring service you get to see your credit file online whenever you want, and laid out in a much easier to understand way than if you order the statutory file.
Therefore sign up, then view your file at no cost (some will be able to do this instantly, some may need to be posted a pass code), using the free trial. Simple!
Here is my personal favorite:
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Experian’s Credit Expert.
Details: Credit Expert offers a ‘free 30 day trial then £6.99 per month’ service which includes your credit report. Don’t confuse it with the Credit Score service which costs a one off £5.95.
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