just had one of those moneysavingexpert emails through, showing how you can check for any PPI claims for free. doing nothing this morning so thought i could spend a bit of time on it, nothing to lose. the email suggested you can go back to the year dot on mortgage info which appealed to me as ive probably had various mortgages and switches since 1980s and i cant remember who they would have been with.

joined experian for a free 30 day trial but the info only seems to go back a couple of years and i cant see any way of finding out my full credit history right back to the 80s.

have i misread the email? do experian not hold all this info? no worries if not, like i say, ive lost nothing (and found out my credit score is excellent btw 🙂 )

cheers

You have been suckered.

Experian require you to ring to cancel the months ‘free’ trial. This they will then forget and charge you every month until you notice.

I know 5 people at work who have had this. Shysters.

Yeah, Experian are a **** nightmare to leave – they make their money selling dubious services to people who don’t really understand how credit reporting works – which is like saying they rip off people who don’t understand Rocket Surgery, there’s acres of bullshit written and spoken about credit reporting to make it seem more complex than it is.

Anyway, due to the DPA Credit Agencies can only hold data for a maximum of 6 years from the month it’s filed so they won’t be able to help you with anything prior to this.

Also Banks / Building Societies aren’t required to hold data for more than 6 years – I know for a fact that one of the big banks has data going back to the 1800’s (obviously some of it’s archived in less than easy to access forms) but a lot of this is ‘de personal-isd’ I.E. they keep the raw data for use, but removal all the customer names.

To claim a missold PPI claim from more than 6 years ago you would have to have the paperwork, or at least remember the details and contact them and hope they’ll fess up about having the details of it.

By all means dig though your paperwork at home, but Experian can’t help you.

waves hand… experian got me for a month charges, barstewards.

doh…..im usually quite good at sniffing out scams :-/

ill try and cancel soon as poss then

thanks

EDIT: rang, cancelled, confirmation email received, so hopefully no harm done 🙂

I thought that, but a year later a charge appeared on my account from Experian for some other yearly thing.

I’d make it explicitly clear that you want to leave all services and have nothing at all to do with them ever again in any form.

They did refund me the money when I asked.

By the way – Noddle will offer you all the actually useful information Experian will – for nowt.