I had a joint account with a chap for a while due to a band I played with and recently things went sour, I have closed the account but I believe I am still linked financialy to him. I have been in touch with the credit companies equifax, experian and call credit and they all say I will have to registar with them and obtain a credit report and find out if we are linked. This seems like a very long winded exercise so I asked Natwest who they used to store credit info etc and they said they only use Equifax. So what I am asking is, will I only have to be de-linked with them or do they all share info? My fingers are crossed that its just the one or this may take some time! Also does it cost to be de-linked. Thanks in advance for any help/info given. Cheers.

All of them have the information. You can get our report off each for £2 and add a notice of correction.

I know about this sort of thing – just got to have my tea!

You can get a statutory credit report for £2 (the maximum they can charge) showing the state of your finances according to them.

For Experian you have to do it by post: http://www.experian.co.uk/consumer/

Equifax let you do it online: http://www.equifax.co.uk/Products/credit/statutory-report.html

Callcredit don’t have details of the statutory report on their site, but there’s a template letter for getting one here: http://mutterings.moneysavingexpert.com/Callcredit.doc

They’ll all prefer you to sign up for all sorts of services that give you enhanced and ongoing access to your credit file, but there’s really no need. If you do find inaccuracies in your credit report, you can report them to the credit checking companies for correction.

Before you can talk to the CRAs you need to get your credit report – quickest way is http://www.myequifax.co.uk – they can’t talk to you until you do this to do with identity fraud etc etc.

either on the report or from taking to them they will guide you through it.

If I remember rightly you will need to register a NoC (Notice of Correction) to highlight to the agencies you are not connected to this person anymore.

This should disassociate you from them.

I’d do some checking for you and see if you need to do this on all CRAs or just one.

I should add you may not need to get a report but I’ll check that as well.

Thanks very much for info so far, I have actually signed up to equifax and experian on a 30 day free trial and I will get a credit report from them both, sort them out and then cancel so hopefully it won’t cost anything. Not done callcredit yet so will wait for further info. Thanks anyhow.

To be honest not many companies use CallCredit so I wouldn’t bother!!!