Over the past two years Andrew Gardner’s life has been turned upside down. He’s had to deal with a never-ending stream of threatening letters from debt collectors, court summonses in the post, and warnings of imminent visits from bailiffs.
He’s also received a legal notice telling him a court judgment had been entered against him, and his credit file was left in tatters, leaving his plans to build an extension hanging in the balance.
It all stems from the fact that Andrew Gardner racked up a pile of debts, prompting NatWest to set the dogs on him. But there was one huge flaw in NatWest’s strategy: the Andrew Gardner the bank – and the various debt recovery people – have been pursuing isn’t the Andrew Gardner pictured. He might have the same first name and surname, and a similar date of birth, but the other Andrew Gardner has no connection to our Andrew Gardner, and the two men live at opposite ends of the country.
Our Andrew Gardner has never even held a bank account with NatWest, or had any other association with the state-owned bank. It has all been a horrific mistake, but it seems that once NatWest made its fateful error, and then supplied this incorrect information to one of the main credit reference agencies, the die was cast.
Gardner and his wife, Jane, have been left to sort out the mess, in a story that highlights the huge influence credit agencies have over our lives – an influence that critics say they wield irresponsibly.
Our Gardner, 48, who lives in Surrey, told Guardian Money that the credit agencies are in the privileged position of holding personal information about millions of people, but rely on being fed the correct data. If there are errors, “this can result in disastrous consequences, as we have found out to our cost”, he says.
The saga began in February 2013, when Gardner received a letter on behalf of NatWest stating that he owed bank charges. The next day he visited a local NatWest branch to explain that he had never had an account with the bank, and lived many miles away from the branch mentioned. He showed his driving licence and passport to the manager, who said it was likely to be a case of identity fraud. The bank’s fraud department later called to say they suspected this was simply a case of the bank “mis-tracing” their customer.
Gardner thought that was the end of the matter – but then the letters started arriving from debt collection firm Robinson Way, on behalf of NatWest. A few days later he received a “letter before action”, and then a court summons from a county court. Robinson Way later apologised, saying proceedings should never have been issued and it would withdraw the summons. “I pointed out that the middle name of the defendant was stated on the summons,” says Gardner, who doesn’t have a middle name.
Next came a letter from the court advising Gardner that a judgment had been entered against him at his Surrey address. “It also warned me this could affect my employment,” he says. Gardner again contacted Robinson Way, which told him it would remove the judgment. While waiting for confirmation of this, he received a letter from another debt collection agency, Wescot, stating that bailiffs had been instructed.
“My two young children were very apprehensive and we were frightened that if they opened the front door to bailiffs they would walk in and start taking stuff,” Gardner told us. “My wife and I both work full-time, and with a court judgment and a bailiffs’ visit apparently imminent, we were forced to take annual leave from work.”
He tried to sort the matter out with the bank, but found himself confronted with a catch-22: as the account was not his, the bank couldn’t discuss it with him under the Data Protection Act.
In May 2013 Gardner went to the Financial Ombudsman Service – at which point, he says, NatWest contacted him and “apologised profusely” for its error. “Its customer had been identified as a ‘gone away’, and due to the same name and apparently similar date of birth, I had been pursued for the debt in error,” he says.
Gardner’s main concern was that his credit file would say there was a court judgment against him but, he says, NatWest reassured him it had not only amended its own records, it had contacted all the credit reference agencies and instructed them to delete the erroneous address link. The bank also sent him a cheque for a “nominal” amount of compensation.
But numerous letters from other debt collection agencies, concerning unrelated debts, continued to arrive. He later discovered, he says, that the incorrect information provided by NatWest to the credit agencies was still available and, worse, it was being shared.
Earlier this year the Gardners decided to go ahead with plans to build an extension, and in August they formally applied to extend their mortgage – but were turned down on the grounds of an adverse credit score. Gardner checked his credit file with Experian, which showed he had an “excellent” credit score, with no missed or late payments. However, his file with another credit reference agency, Callcredit, showed a list of debts from companies he had never heard of. His three previous addresses had been deleted and replaced with two other addresses – one he recognised as that of NatWest’s Andrew Gardner. His file also mistakenly linked him to another “Mrs Gardner”, as well as his own wife.
Callcredit eventually proved helpful but, Gardner says, its stance remains that it isn’t responsible for the holding and sharing of incorrect data, and that NatWest was at fault for providing the wrong address link in January 2013. He says Callcredit contacted NatWest twice, but on both occasions the bank refused to authorise the removal of the address.
Because of the delay, the Gardners have lost their builder (work had been due to start next month). Even if the mortgage finance comes through, they now don’t know whether they can go ahead with their extension, as the other quotes were much more expensive. Meanwhile, Mrs Gardner has not been feeling well, and her GP had told her that her symptoms “were very likely stress-related”.
Gardner says he and his wife have no ill-feeling towards his namesake – they hold NatWest solely responsible for an “intolerable” situation that has caused them a huge amount of stress and inconvenience, as well as “significant financial loss”.
The letters from the debt collection firms have kept on coming, too – another one arrived as recently as just over a week ago. However, after Money got on to NatWest, a happy ending of sorts could now finally be in sight.
What NatWest says
NatWest told us: “We unreservedly apologise for the distress and inconvenience we have caused Mr Gardner. We are awaiting confirmation from credit reference agencies that this has now been resolved. Once this has been confirmed we will ensure Mr Gardner is compensated for this experience, and we will also provide him with a letter he can use to make debt collection agencies aware that he should not be linked to this debt.”
NatWest indicated that a tracing agent acting on its behalf had mistakenly linked Gardner with another man with the same name and a similar date of birth. An investigation led to the bank paying Gardner £400 compensation. It says it had also asked to have the link removed but it seems this did not work properly.
Meanwhile, Callcredit refuted suggestions NatWest had got in touch in 2013 to ensure the data was deleted. “Our subsequent investigation found no such instruction,” it said.
• This article was amended on 13 October 2014 to remove personal details.
