Credit reference agencies hold enormous quantities of personal financial data on us and it should be their duty to make sure that it is accurate.

Instead, they pass on information having made the barest minimum of checks. They are the village gossips of the financial world.
The first we will usually know of a mistake is when we are turned down for a loan, credit card or mortgage.
In everyday life, publishing false and damaging information about somebody has a name: libel. We can go to the courts and seek redress.
However, credit reference agencies can merely put a note on their records saying the information is disputed.
As the system is supposed to work, the credit reference agency should contact the firm responsible for supplying the information and remove it within 28 days if they cannot substantiate it.
But this does not always seem to happen in practice, and even when it does the damage is often already done: a mortgage is refused, a credit card limit cut or interest rate raised.
Then there is the fact we have to pay to see the information they hold on us. Perhaps the £2 fee by post can be justified. But there can be no justification for charging £4 or more to see information via the internet. Where is the cost to them?
These firms should be forced to allow everyone free access to their own credit information and they should be compelled to remove instantly anything we dispute until the firm supplying it can substantiate it or agree it with us.
The current system turns the principle of innocent until proven guilty on its head.
We did not ask these firms to collate this data, they choose to do it and they make money from doing it.
If we refuse to tick the box on bank application forms which allows them to share data, then we are likely to be turned down for an account. We are bullied into allowing personal data to be shared among a wide range of companies, yet we have no right to view the data without paying.
The current credit reference system is poorly regulated, provides insufficient consumer protection and is in desperate need of reform.