Does it work? / Deep dive

The credit bureau complaints

Four complaints, none decided in my favour, and none in which the central allegation was examined. This is the part of the process I am least satisfied with, and the one I learned most from.

What was wrong

The bureau held two credit profiles for me under one PAN. One had my history. The other was empty.

When a lender's enquiry landed on the empty one, it saw a score of "-1", meaning no history. Three card applications were declined on that basis, in March 2025, February 2026 and July 2026. The clearest evidence is the last: a bank declined an application in mid-July, the bureau merged the two profiles later that month, and the same bank approved the same application fifteen days after the first enquiry. Nothing else had changed.

This also explains an earlier case. In 2025 a bank told the Ombudsman it had rejected me because my score was "-1". The Ombudsman found the bank's vague reason deficient but nobody asked where the "-1" came from.

After the merge, enquiries from the second profile appeared on my report and my score moved. I asked the bureau two questions it has still not answered: when was the second profile created, and which lenders were served from it?

What happened, in order

1. April to June 2026: the first complaint

   About alert emails for strangers' loans. Closed as no deficiency: the bureau shows what lenders report. Case. Fair as far as it went, and it gave me the list of lenders to pursue.

2. 17 August: the duplicate profile complaint

   I asked for disclosure of the second profile's history, removal of enquiries that were not mine, and compensation. Case.

3. 20 to 31 August: two rounds of comments

   The bureau's first reply to the Ombudsman did not mention the duplicate profile. It said it was still verifying and would revert. I commented on 24 August and again on 31 August. In writing to me on 19 August, the bureau had said it had "rectified and consolidated" my credit information.

4. 31 August, evening

   At 8:12 pm the bureau emailed asking me for evidence of two profiles. At 8:20 pm it told the Ombudsman's office that it had received no evidence from me. At 8:36 pm I sent three of the bureau's own reports. Its system acknowledged receipt. It did not correct what it had told the office.

5. 1 to 3 September: closed as "fully settled"

   The closure letter says the bureau "has not received any evidence from him where his two profiles are reflecting" and treats the matter as resolved under clause 14(8)(a). I was never shown the submission it relied on.

6. 3 September: representation

   I wrote the same day on one narrow point: the closure rests on a statement that is factually wrong, and here is the bureau's own acknowledgement. It was turned away as a repeat of a decided complaint.

7. September and October: two more complaints

   One about the bureau's conduct after closure, including three disputes it opened in my name that I had not raised, which it later called inadvertent. Closed as "suggestions, queries etc." The next, about later events, closed as a duplicate.

What the RTI replies showed

I filed two applications under the Right to Information Act: one to the office that handled the case, one to the department that runs the Scheme.

I wrote to that department on 14 October with the closure letters and both RTI replies. A grievance on the government's public grievance portal was closed in eight days. An RTI first appeal on an unanswered question was dismissed.

What I take from it

• The comments round is not guaranteed to be read. In most of my cases it clearly was. Here the record suggests it was not, and there is no step at which that can be checked or corrected.
• Send evidence to the Ombudsman's office directly, not only to the entity that asks for it. The bureau's "no evidence received" was accurate for sixteen minutes and was never updated.
• "Fully settled" needs nobody's agreement but the office's. Clause 14(8)(a) does not require the complainant to accept the settlement.
• A bureau complaint needs a bureau-specific failure. Wrong data is the lender's. A duplicate profile, a refusal to disclose, or a dispute opened without instruction is the bureau's own. I led with the right things and it still failed, but the first complaint failed because I had not.
• RTI works on the RBI, not on the bureau, which is a private company. It will not reopen a case. It will show you how the decision was recorded.
• The Scheme is not the last forum. A consumer commission can hear this, with the RTI replies as documents.

This page gives my account, based on the closure letters, the bureau's emails to me and the RTI replies. The bureau's position, as recorded in the closure letter, is that the variation arose from details entered when a report was generated and that it had no evidence of two profiles.