I recently wrote an article about the importance of checking your credit record. Taking my own advice, I applied through Credit Health to receive my credit records from both TransUnion ITC and Experian.
To my surprise, I discovered that one of the records showed a listing from Standard Bank. According to the record, I had a Standard Bank Blue Bean card on which I owed about R500 and had not paid my instalments for four months. The problem is that I have never had a Blue Bean credit card or applied for any Standard Bank account.
It turned out that this was not a case of ID fraud, which was my first concern. It was a classic administrative stuff-up.
More than a year ago, I made the mistake of accepting a “pre-approved” Barclaycard — which, fortunately, will be disallowed under the new National Credit Act. After three months I closed the account because it was an administrative nightmare with Standard Bank, which was the back end for the card, losing my payments. But the balance was fully paid up and closed more than a year ago.
When Blue Bean took over the Barclaycard book, my account was re-opened and collection fees attached. No one has been able to explain how or why this happened. When I called Blue Bean, I was told that my account reflected as closed and paid up, yet the credit system said something else.
The problem was sorted out in hours and the listing taken off Experian. But I am sure the only reason it happened so expediently was because I am a financial journalist. Imagine an ordinary person trying to get through the front office, which assures you that the account is closed and paid off, and the credit office, which disagrees! I would have had to trowel through my badly organised paperwork to find the letter Barclaycard sent me a year ago confirming the closure of the account.
The moral of the story is that I am glad I checked my credit record. The listing would have shown me to be a bad payer which, if not enough to have a bank completely turn down my credit application, would have impacted on the interest rate it was prepared to offer me. In addition, it would have added to my record in terms of the amount of credit I have available under the new National Credit Act — again, negatively impacting any future credit applications.
From September 1, you can access your credit records once a year for free. Do yourself a favour and make it part of your financial health check — you may be surprised.