There are many reasons why we should all use credit reports for our business and personal lives. Financial service industries are all very well acquainted to this valuable information and base lending decisions on the results of the reports.
I think it’s surprising that these services, available to us all, are not common knowledge; why don’t we talk about these things more to our friends? I know it’s not the most stimulating of conversations to have in the pub on a Friday night but a few quid could save you hundreds of pounds and hours of time.
Until I started working for Duport I had no idea how useful credit reports could be. Now I honestly use them at least one a month for personal use and have friends contacting me every week for information on a company or a director. Once I discovered how useful they were I told people about them. It also helps that I can get them free of charge; call it a perk of the job (sorry dad!).
Only yesterday a friend contacts me because they needed information for one of their friends who had been duped by a building company. They were urgently trying to reach someone who had not fulfilled their obligations. It transpired that this company had been using a false identity and that there was no way of tracing them. I remarked how sad it was as this so easily could have been prevented by checking them out first. They won’t be making the same mistake again.
What shocks me even more is the amount of easily preventable fraud large businesses experience. As we deal with thousands of companies we often receive payment reminder letters from well known mobile companies, electrical suppliers, car hire companies etc for DORMANT COMPANIES??? I always ask these well known brands why they didn’t bother to check who the owners of the business were or why they didn’t know the status of the company before granting thousands of pounds of credit!
I understand why we need to be vigilant and shred every document, conceal our card numbers and so on but what’s the point when someone can purchase a PC with a fake, Microsoft word company letter head?
That’s why we offer free credit reports to all our company formations customers. We want you to see how useful they are. In spite of this you would be surprised how few of our customers actually take a look. Of course we are doing this in the hope that we will get more interest and ultimately more sales, but genuinely whether you use our service or not we hope that we can save a lot of pain at a later date.
How many of you actually check out your suppliers or customers? Are you aware that you can do this?
