Help with how to proceed

[Chrissy1954]

Dear All

 I am 64 years of age, have a Business which has been a family Business for over 50 years.  I have recently applied for a mortgage and to my surprise the application was declined. Reason – a default has been attached to my credit file on EXPERIAN.  I have never ever had bad Credit simply because I have a Business and DO NOT have or want a credit card – most of my buying is done in CASH or through my personal bank account.

I have never missed a payment on anything, Ive had a Car on Credit & paid it off before time, I have a Massive Mortgage monthly payment (due to my age) since the year 2010 to which Ive NEVER defaulted and now I have the chance (due to my age) to half my Mortgage payments by re-mortgaging what term is left to pay, via a Mortgage Advisor.  However, he has just advise me that we have been rejected for a mortgage with HSBC & has told me to get my credit report from Experian and find out what is causing the issue.

 What I discovered is that Vodafone recorded a default on my Experian Credit File.  This came about because I stood Guarantor for my granddaughter who was aged 17 and although she kept to the agreement paying every month from her bank account (not mine) until she wanted to upgrade, VODAPHONE have not kept to their side of the contract agreement. When she was due to Upgrade, she contacted VODAPHONE and arranged a Termination of Contract.  Vodaphone agreed to the termination saying that they would “send her a final confirmation letter to include any outstanding payment”.  My grand daughter went with a new Company and never heard anymore from VODAPHONE.  I also never received anything from Vodaphone as I don’t use them.  It wasn’t until I started to get what I thought initially to be junk mail from a Company called FREDERICKSON.

 Frederickson apparently are a debt collecting Company for VODAPHONE, & luckily my partners nephew had worked for them in the past so we learnt a lot about Vodaphone & what they do, or I should say “DON’T DO”. 

 Below is a link to a VODAPHONE BLOG which I happened to come across on the Internet, where, if you read it you will see that VODAPHONE have a habit of “not doing what they say they will do” thus adding monthly charges to your bill which are deemed unpaid, then pass it on to collection agents.  The worst thing about this is that VODAPHONE are ruining peoples lives by trading this way as this goes as a “DEFAULT” on peoples Experian Credit Files.

 https://forum.vodafone.co.uk/t5/Pay-monthly/Defaulted-Vodafone-account-on-my-credit-file/td-p/172495...

 I really do believe that its time VODAPHONE that the Ombudsman or at least Watchdog investigated what VODAPHONE are doing.

 I await a response to you all as to what you are going to do about this before I take this to the Press.

[BandOfBrothers]

The Vodafone Social Media Team here has a Credit File Specialist Team. 

They'll bring you in away from the open forum to pass security checks and they'll pass this to that team for an investigation. 

Please await until they catch up with your thread. 

[Chrissy1954]

Thank you

[AnnS]

Hi @Chrissy1954

Vodafone do not offer contracts to the under 18s, if a contract was taken out it would have had to be done in your name making you responsible for keeping the account up to date and making sure there were no missed payments.

As this would have been your account and your Granddaughter was not the account holder, any upgrading or change of contract would have to be made by you, Vodafone would have been unable to discuss the account with her or authorise a termination. As soon as she turned 18, subject to a credit check, you would have been able to change ownership of the contract to your Granddaughter leaving you without any further responsibility towards the contract.

When the bill payments stopped being made by your Granddaughter, the contract would still have been running and Vodafone would have tried to make contact by calling the number and requesting payment, when there was no response, the contract would have been cancelled by Vodafone and as the account was in default, this would have been reported against your credit file.

Give the Team time to get to the thread, they will help and do everything possible to find out what happened and see if anything can be done.

[Chrissy1954]

Ok but why didnt I then get letters?  It was only before her 18th birthday thats how she was able to get an Upgrade with a different phone Company

[Alex]

@Chrissy1954 Thanks for posting on our Community page and it does sound like this is going to require some digging and investigation in order to identify what's happened. 

Our Credit team are more than capable of looking into this and you can contact them using the instructions in my private message. 

I wish you all the best and hope you're able to come to a satisfactory resolution and have all of your outstanding questions answered.