Credit Reference Agencies - No Substitute for Customer Service
I’ve recently moved into the second house to be finished in a new development and found out that due to a local transmitter the Vodafone signal is so poor that it’s barely usable, so I decided to switch to the Orange network (which has good signal strength), but hit a small snag called Experian.
Experian basically make money from selling other peoples information, but the problem is their information isn’t update to date and so they say the house that I’ve now been living in for two weeks doesn’t exist. Due to the non-existence of the house Experian won’t provide any information about me, and without the information Orange won’t provide me with a SIM.
Now this could be seen as reasonable, except for one small hitch. Due to the current house being a rental and my previous house being owned I have a fairly healthy bank balance, and the contract I am looking to join is a 15 pounds per month rolling one month contract, but alas Orange feel that despite the proceeds of the sale of my house I could not afford such a wild monthly amount.
So if you’re running a business that relies on credit reports from Experian or a similar agency be aware, you may end up refusing a potentially lucrative customer just because their systems aren’t up to date.
Update : After nearly 45 mins on the ‘phone to orange they are willing to ignore the Experian report if I provide a bank statement.