Hi outofdeed.

Could I just check that the start date of your trust deed was May 2008, not the end date?

Default notices should usually be dated no more than a short period after the trust deed began.

Balances showing as being settled wouldn't normally happen until you're discharged.

I guess to summarise, does your question relate to the balance of your accounts or to being issued with a formal default notice?

Sorry if I'm missing something obvious but it's late!

Hi OutofDeed

I read it as Trust Deed started May 2008 and finished May 2014 (6 years) but some of the Settlement Dates are showing as November 2008 which makes the Defaulted Account fall off at November 2014 instead of May 2014.

I had a similar problem with some. One showed six months beyond the start date.

I sent a copy of the Form 5 discharge with a letter asking them to amend the date to the date of discharge. It took a few letters on and around 6 months to get it sorted to within a few weeks of the date (the effort was not worth pursuing any more for less than a month).

I also contacted the Credit Reference companies to ask for advice. They said if they were not corrected I should write to them with a copy and they would take it up on my behalf (Noddle and Experian, both of which I was a registered member). Fortunately, that was not required.

If none of that had worked, I would have written to the ICO to ask for their support with it. You can get their website by entering ICO in a search engine. I have called them for advice. They were helpful and told me how to submit an enquiry to them.

Hope that helps.

OK thanks guys yes start May 2008, end 2014, all payments made at 61% of the amount as dividend, so I am feeling the satisfaction date should be May, but its a great point about the hassle for the sake of 10 weeks, it will probably take that to sort it out, although I like the idea of an ICO enquiry form.

What is more important to me is am I right to say they are wrong about this assertion its the date "their department" gets in internally that counts, I cant believe that for a minute.

Thanks everyone

Hi outofdeed.

I'm sorry but I still can't answer as I'm not sure precisely what you're asking about.

Could you respond regarding the points in my last post please and I'll do my best.

sorry da, I will try this way 🙂

Could I just check that the start date of your trust deed was May 2008, not the end date?

yes trust deed started May 2008

Default notices should usually be dated no more than a short period after the trust deed began.

yes every other company listed the date of may 2008, but this bank have got accounts showing as settled in 2008, their explanation being CRA did not get the account from Retail til then so they argue that's when the clock should start ticking, November 2008, and refused to change it.

Balances showing as being settled wouldn't normally happen until you're discharged.

Discharges are long past over a year.

I guess to summarise, does your question relate to the balance of your accounts or to being issued with a formal default notice?

The issue is the default date, the account shows as settled but has a record that "in last 6 years payments have been 6+ months in arrears" which isn't correct as its settled in May 2008 for me, so 6 years past that is May 2008, so they aren't correct with this statement, but its the devils own job to get the person on other end of phone to understand.

Not sure if that helps 🙂

It does.

My understanding now is that this isn't about a formal default notice. Instead it's the bank reporting, from month to month, that the repayments were in default.

None of us are credit record experts, but I'm afraid I'm not sure that you're on firm ground.

You continued to owe this money until the date of your discharge, it wasn't settled when you entered your trust deed. You'll have been paying the trust deed, not the contractual repayments, so the bank appears to have an argument that their reporting that you were in default in paying your contractual repayments in the early stages of your trust deed is fairly recorded on your credit report.

As I say though, I'm not an expert, so you might want to run this by the Information Commissioner's helpline.

yes I will certainly ask the commissioner, but I am not sure I understand, they amount is settled in so far as the matter is set in how it shall be repaid, and its covered by stature so one would imagine it was therefore enforceable to get this changed, as its a negative on the credit report, when I served my 6 years at great strain, the entire premise being that at 6 years I am cleared of all the negative info.

will sure feedback what they say to me, the annoying thing was they told me on the phone they would change it to may "no problem" but never did

Well it's not necessarily totally settled outofdeed.

For example, there's no shortage of people that sign trust deeds and who then fail to observe the terms they agreed to. Often this will be a change of circumstances that is no fault of their own, but there are folks out there who simply choose not to do what they promised to.

They'll typically be discharged from their trust deed, but not from their debts. The money is still owed and the original contract still applies. As such, it might be argued that the matter isn't totally settled until a debtor has completed their obligations under their trust deed and been discharged.

In terms of your premise regarding your credit file being clear after six years, I can understand where you're coming from.

From a debt adviser point of view, this isn't something I'd ever say to someone. I'd say that anything that goes onto your credit file will stay there for six years. I'd say that the report of entering a trust deed will no longer be on your file after six years. I wouldn't say that it's impossible that anything new will go onto your credit file after the date that your trust deed begins.

Hi TDA

That is very interesting to read. On this site, when I was approaching my discharge I was given advice and there were template letters I followed to have my credit file updated. There were based on the date the Trust Deed was signed.

The credit file could not be updated until the Trust Deed was discharged, however, when Form 5 was issued and showed both the date of Trust Deed signing and date of discharge, then that was sent/used to apply to the Creditors to have the Credit files updated - using Date of Signing.

One company challenged that and as with OutofDeed said it was the date they were notified of the Trust Deed, which was six months later than the signing date. The effect of that is that when the Trust Deed drops off, that account would remain as defaulted for a further six months. As will happen with OutofDeed for the 12 weeks he is referring to.

I challenged the company position, they checked further and (reluctantly) accepted it was indeed the date the Trust Deed was signed. So, until reading your post, my understanding from previous advices, letters and posts on here that it was the Date of the signing of the Trust Deed (but could only be updated after you had completed your obligations).

And indeed that is logical. The Trust Deed which captures all your debts would fall off in six years. Why would the individual debts remain for longer? The variations are obvious when you see the difference in the dates processed by different companies involved.

Each of my accounts on both Experian and Noddle are now marked as Satisfied (as opposed to Settled). I also realise they could be marked as Partially Satisfied. The date is the date of the Trust Deed signing (give or take a week or so which was not worth fighting about)). But it does take perseverence to get to the right department and get it corrected.

Albeit it does not affect me now since mine are corrected, I would be interested to hear what the ICO's position is on that since I understood the original advice via here came from their office, I think based on the Data Protection Act.

I would not have known how to get mine updated without the help of the team on here so I am very, very grateful for that, and simply interested to see if things have changed now or if I was just lucky that they accepted my claim eventually.

It may not be worth the potential time, effort, mailing costs and telephone costs to get it corrected for 10 weeks OutofDeed, unless it is crucial to you for some reason.

Hi Firewalker.

This, I think, is the source of much confusion on this thread!

You're talking about formal "default notices" I think and yes, I agree with what you've written.

My understanding is that outofdeed is asking about something different - namely reporting of the account status from month to month. This is where credit reference agencies mark it over time as being "1" (1 month behind) "2" "3" "4" "5" "6" etc or "D". You wouldn't mark these entries as being "satisfied" or "partially satisfied" when a trust deed ends - I think the balance just gets changed to zero.

This has now reached the level of regular confusion that I'm calling the ICO next week and will be adding an article to the site that explains the difference between a "default notice" and an account monthly status being "in default" - then goes on to explain what you can expect in terms of credit reporting after discharge for each.

Head spinning!

I'm in the process of chasing a few creditors to start the process of tidying up my credit file after being discharged. I have the template letters that I should be sending to the data controllers but I don't have any info about my old account numbers. Being a typical pre-TD person who preferred sticking his head in the sand, I destroyed all of the paperwork I had relating to any accounts. On Noddle, the last 4 digits of the accounts are present. Is this enough to write to the creditors with, or will I need the full account numbers? If so, does anyone know how I can get a hold of these??

They're probably on your trust deed paperwork if you have it upstream, or perhaps your trustee could supply?

Appreciate all the comments and had some developments on this as follows.

Got the reply from ICO saying 30 days to open a file then 8 weeks for the company to respond, so that would be past the date these will drop off anyway, but maybe a good tip for those finding any resistance where the dates aren't like mine 9-10 weeks from dropping off.

So I tried once again to call the bank concerned, got a lady who started to reel off IVA rules and when I explained trust deed isn't IVA she genuinely didn't know the difference, so at great pain I went through the process to explain, the first letter ( early April 08 ) saying the deed will go protected mid may 08, the 5 weeks from the edinburgh gazette entry they have to challenge it, the fact they never, meaning its deemed to be settled may 08, so shouldn't be reported as behind as its "settled"

She still wasn't getting It "but your default is nov 08 on our system, retail never told us til then" so I demanded a supervisor, who confirmed nobody will take phone calls or emails on this topics only internal emails from this customer facing department with staff clearly untrained on what trust deeds are.

After over 1 hour they finally agreed and have said they will reset the info at end August so at start September my credit files should be updated.

I have extreme doubt that they will deliver on this, but I am watching it and will report back early next week.

No wonder your head is spinning TDA [:D]

Well done OutofDeed. Persevere. I had notes of dates and times and names and numbers so I could get back to the same person to follow it up. It did pay off eventually but not easy.

Upstream - I did not have account numbers either. So if you cannot get it from your trustee or trust deed paperwork, I did copy the starred number listed on the Noddle and Experian Website(usually only the last four numbers). However,they seemed to be able to access it from my address without any problems and they gave me the number when I spoke with them on the phone for future reference. Good luck.