Experian Credit Search Reviewed

Experian's website

Ok, I don’t want this blog to turn into a winge-athon, but I feel that I must share my experience of Experian with you.

My mortgage is due to come out of it’s discount period soon, so I thought it would be a good idea to check my credit rating at Experian – http://www.experian.co.uk/

Well, I already have an account with Experian from a year or so ago, so I just had to login and download my credit report.

The last time I used Experian the cost was £4.99 to download the credit report, so I was a little shocked to find that the price is now a whopping £14.99!

The issue doesn’t end there though – to download a credit report, you have to put in your credit or debit card number and then afterwards phone customer services to cancel your order, otherwise you will be charged £14.99 every month until you cancel the order.

Now hang on a minute, I know that we live in a monetary system and businesses have to make money to operate and survive, but what about the ethics of this?

You would think that a company that provides credit profiles to companies, banks, and mortgage companies would have more integrity and encourage people to stay in credit rather than trying to fleece them for downloading a credit report.

Surely, by having this approach of charging a reoccurring monthly fee, it is an unethical way of making money out of people’s vulnerabilities.

Imagine if every time we used our debit or credit cards we would be charged the same amount every month unless we phoned a phone number in our own time to cancel the ongoing fee – there would be an outrage.

To make matters worse, I paid the £14.99 and could not print off the report – I tried with different browsers and another computer but no joy.

Fortunately, I managed to get through to someone from Experian’s customer services in a few minutes, but they then launched into an overview of my credit rating and ways to improve it before even allowing me to cancel the order – probably because it is an 0844 number, which they can profit from.

I told the person at customer services that I could not download my report and they said there was currently a fault on their system.

The agent then went on to tell me that they cannot give refunds, but what they could do was send the report through the post – too late for my appointment with my mortgage broker the next day.

Basically the agent told me that it was not possible for them to give refunds even though it was their mistake that the credit report could not be printed.

Comments please