He wrote to the privacy commissioner: “On the night of 1st July 2014 (Rome time) I received a call from two suppliers to advise that they have tried to charge the credit card provided but it is not going through and until invoice is paid goods will not be supplied. The restrictions on his cards prompted suppliers to express concern, he says, and he suffered “great financial losses” as a result. NAB reduced his credit limit by $1,500 to $18,500.īecause of the complexities and uncertainty of his situation, some credit limits had still not been restored by May 2016.Citibank suspended his credit cards from use until further notice.The company then advised him he could not use his cards for six months. This was $30 less than the current balance, effectively preventing the use of this card. American Express reduced his credit limit from $40,000 to $13,100.The consequences of the incorrect debt listing for KB were immediate: It wasn’t until 30 September that his credit providers were advised that the listing had been removed. The court eventually contacted Veda, which removed the judgment from KB’s credit file on 8 August. When KB contacted Veda again it reiterated that the judgment had been recorded as per the court listing it would take no further action until the court contacted it directly. But the court said it had provided the correct information to Veda and would not be changing anything. KB hired a lawyer who contacted the court. It told him to contact the court that had issued the debt notice “and indicated that Veda would not take action until it heard from the court”. He called Veda on 18 July and asked for the debt to be removed urgently but it refused to do so. When KB landed back in Australia in July 2014, substantially less relaxed than he would have liked, he took urgent steps to try to work out what was happening.
Veda had also notified Citibank Visa of the supposed debt – a number of his suppliers were paid through the Visa card, and attempted payments were blocked. KB owns two businesses that rely on several suppliers. It wasn’t just KB’s holiday that was affected. We’ve had issues where a person can’t get a home loan because they’ve had incorrect information,” Brody says. “If it is incorrect it can have really disastrous consequences for people when they apply for finances. Gerard Brody, the chief executive officer of the Consumer Action Law Centre, says there are strong legal obligations that govern how credit reporting agencies hold and share information. Last February the company was acquired by Equifax Inc, one of the three largest US credit agencies. The company bills itself as “the leading provider of credit information in Australia”, with a 96% market share and a database of 16.5 million credit-active Australians. But odds are if you have a credit card, Veda has something on you. You may never have heard of Veda, or have spoken to its staff. These companies harvest information to generate credit scores that can then be accessed by banks and financial providers. In Australia, credit reporting agencies tell the story of your financial life. The companies that control your purse strings The privacy commissioner also ordered that the company initiate a review into how it collected and used court proceedings to inform its credit reporting. Veda was ordered to pay KB $15,000 in compensation and provide him with a written apology. KB’s story is outlined in a decision by the privacy commissioner, Timothy Pilgrim.
“In short, a holiday costing over $20,000, booked and planned with much anticipation, was ruined.” “With no credit on credit cards I had to manage my time in Italy on very limited funds with no scope for shopping or taking side tours,” KB would tell Australia’s privacy commissioner. It took KB months to untangle what had gone wrong and reverse some of the damage it caused. The credit reporting agency Veda Advantage Information Services and Solutions had then assumed that this was KB and informed his banks. It turned out that the court had issued a debt notice against someone with a similar name – the same surname but a different first name – who happened to live in the same apartment complex. His credit card had been suspended and he could make no further purchases on it during his holiday. That evening he called American Express and was told that a court had recorded a $7,000 debt against him. He tried to make a payment but his credit card was declined. After a long flight from Australia he was looking forward to experiencing all the delights of the Mediterranean summer.īut when KB reached Rome international airport, things started to go wrong. In June 2014 a man known as KB arrived in Rome for a two-week Italian getaway.