Check Your Credit History and Rating for Free

There are two providers of personal credit reports in Australia – Veda and Dun & Bradstreet. The others are aggregators and middle people.

Dun & Bradstreet has just launched http://www.dnbcreditreport.com.au where you can order and receive online a free copy of your report in additon to an instant service.

Unlike our competitor we aren’t making it difficult to gain access to a free report.

would like a free copy of my credit history.

I tried Dun and Bradstreet , twice… took 10 days at least each time for the free report.

All I got was a SAMPLE. i.e. not a real report. It had my name and then just a sample of what a report would look like.

I contacted customer service and was told that real reports you had to pay for.

Checkmyfile.com.au only have a subscription service, so you have to enter your credit card details. you can however cancel subscription before the end of the “free” trial but having to give the details is a no no in my opinion.

So all in all , its near impossible to actually get a free copy of your credit report, which is a bit of a catch 22 when trying to figure out why you can’t get a credit card/loan in the first place…

I called them again and this time got a much more pleasant consultant.
apparently if they can not find any information on you then they send a sample of what a report might look like… strange that as a 35+ year old with loans and credit cards that they could not locate any information on me…

This was explained away by stating that there are actually 2 bodies that hold separate, independent information about our credit history. That it is up to the lender which organisation they use, and that the 2 databases are not searched by either Dun and Bradstreet nor Veda…

What does this mean? It means you have to request your credit report from both to get an accurate picture… just glad I didn’t spend the $30 for an instant ” sample

Question. Why do I have to order my credit file by snail mail, with ID and waiting 10 days for the report, when the banks etc seem to be able to do it online within 1 – 2 days?

I paid for a credit report from Dun and Bradstreet ($30), and on the basis of the report applied for a loan. I’d previously had a default, but figured, as it wasnt on the report that it had been more than five years and had been removed. Not so. The loan got knocked back because of the default.

I subsequently got a report from Veda, and sure enough the default was there, still with a few months before it will be removed. The Dun and Bradstreet report missed this and a couple of other credit applications i had made.

I contacted Dun and Bradstreet and as with the previous post, got some nonsense about different databases, and that if the lender doesn’t contact Dun and Bradstreet, then how could they possibly know.

Comically, the guy on the phone at Dun and Bradstreet tried to convince me that this was to my advantage. After all, if a lender only used the Dun and Bradstreet profile then i would not have any problem.

It wasn’t immediately clear, however, why a lender would check such a substandard service that omits details of a persons borrowing history. However, if there is such a lender out there, please let me know.

To keep the joke going, i asked if i could get my $30 refunded in light of the things they had missed on the report. No doing. After all, according to the guy on the phone, I had paid for a service, and they had provided a service. And he wouldn’t even acknowledge that it was a pretty inadequate service.

Anyway, if you want a cheap credit rating ($30), go for Dun and Bradstreet. If you want an ACCURATE CREDIT RATING that is used by lenders, then go for Veda ($36)

Hi Susan,

The banks pay a premium for fast service. You will be able to pay on the two above mentioned sites if you want and get faster service. I would however recommend instead saving the money, waiting the 10 days and using the saved money to treat yourself to something nice!

Veda has the second largest database in the southern hemisphere, second only to the Australian Tax Office.

Many consumers find that Dun & Bradstreet hold very little information (if any) regarding their credit history. Veda provides a free copy of your credit history within 10 working days. Alternatively if you need it immediately, you can recieve it within 1 working day for $41.95, this fee is to put you at the front of the queue of thousands of requests recieved daily.

For an extra $10, Veda provides a monitoring service. When an update is made to your file they will email you within 24 hours to let you know.

Veda is the only company that provides this kind of service, and it allows you to take control of your credit history, potentially protecting yourself from any fraudelent activity.

They also have a dispute resolution department, in which they will undertake an investigation on your behalf (free of charge) if you are disputing information on your file because you believe it does not belong to you or was listed in error.