Jagoinvestor
April 12, 2012
Want a Loan ? Pay your phone/electricity bills on time !
Is there a way to determine whether or not it is risky to lend ‘You’ money? How do I know that you wont be a bad customer one day? Very simple – Just look at your credit history and see if you paid your dues on time or not; How many times you were late in making your credit card payment, home loan payment, personal loan dues. This is how CIBIL took birth in India.
But wait – Is this enough? No, we have several other kinds of dues and we make various payments – those are mobile bill payments (post paid- around 5 crore of them), internet monthly fees (post paid), electricity and other utility bills, even your health insurance premiums. So now very soon you will hear that your mobile bills, electricity bills, internet bills etc are being tracked (actually they are already being tracked) and they will contribute in making of your credit history.
As of now CIBIL, Equifax and Experian (all 3 are credit Beauru) use only your Loan repayments as the criteria for your credit report and credit score, but the Credit Information Companies (Regulation) Act 2005 allows insurance, cellular as well as phone services companies to be counted amongst specified users of credit information companies, therefore, making them eligible to use the database. So very soon all such payments will start contributing to your credit score.
Past records will also affect your credit report
All the major telecom service providers in the country — BSNL, Vodafone and Airtel — are now in discussions with CIBIL for sharing their customer database. So, have you ever declined paying your phone bill? Have you delayed your electricity bill for many months/years or have been late all the time? Do you have this attitude of paying the mobile/internet bills only after getting 2-3 reminders? If the answer is YES, then you better know that all those past sins are staring at you and soon will haunt you.
Be ready to see your home loan or car loan application being rejected because you never paid that vodafone bill for Rs 1,500 and ran off or changed your address? Dude!, your name, photo, past address, DOB is all with them- it will unfold now and if you doubt that- see what CIBIL has to say about it.
“Our systems are capable of handling past payment records as well. If the telecom companies are able to give us the past payment records, we will upload them in the system,” says Arun Thukral – MD, Credit Information Bureau
It’s not clear how much weightage will be put on these kinds of utility bills and insurance premium payments because these are small ticket size in nature and should not be seen in lines with home loan EMI’s and credit card debt which can grow to a big amount. But what do you think about this move and do you think its right?
I am rejected by banks to issue me credit card due to CIBIL . how to get information about where i have gone wrong.
Can i get it free of charge?.
How to get deleted from CIBIL?.
If the reason for my inclusion in CIBIL is not genuine, where to fight and how? .
Pl answer me.
Thank you…
Kumar.
First step is to check your CIBIL score .. After that only you can find out what is to be done !
nice article
Hey Mohit, this article is very misleading. A reputable blog site like Jagoinvestor shouldnt use such articles to generate traffic. Anyone reading the first 2-4 paragraphs would actually be under the impression that this is in practice. Please be clear in stating the facts. This plan has only been proposed so far. The data would not be very usable as our PAN cards are not linked to our phone or utility bills. So in order to get this activated the Govt would first have to get the public register their PAN cards with the Telcos and such.
In short please stop spreading confusion instead of clarity. You are not waking the investor up.
Hi Suyash
Can you mention which point in the article is not true ? As far as I know credit beureu are in talks with mobile companies and there are talks to track that in coming times.
Hey Manish, please re-read my comment. If that isnt self-explantory than I dont think I’ll be able to do a better job a second time. I read few other pieces of yours.. and you come across as the sensible type. Cheers!
This should not be a criteria since there are also innocent ppl like us who are prey to so companies who are charging on us illegal accusations like
“I had taken a reliance data card which they dispite me requesting for a prepaid had provided me with a postpaid one. i was using it till dec 2013. and terminated the same with proper forms etc at their reliance outlet after clearing all outstanding, i was confirmed that the connnection is terminated ..but got no written acknowledgement . ..since then i have never used the connection and was also out of stte..then i started getting emails and calls from relaince..some lady is posing as the reliance legal team/ or cibil court personnel/ or civil court case bench ..etc are threatening me to pay a 2900/- bill for a connection which i never used from jan 2014.
They are very rude and insulting in their conversation style and is mentally harassing me to go pay bills by eo 6Pm or 4 pm..or else you shall be fined a 30,000 or above at our court hearing tomorrow.hence come to court and pay the huge fine..or else come to outlet in an hour and pay bill..’
On questioning their authenticity of where from they call and why are they faking calls as if from other authorities while ACTUALLY THEY ARE FROM RELAINCE..THEY ARE SHOUTING AT ME AND FURTHER MORE INSULTING Me
Should GO AND PAY THE SO CALLED BILL WHICH IM NOT RESPOINSIBLE FOR..AND WHT GUARANTEE THAT THEY WOULDNT ASK ME TO DO SO AGAIN.???
“Hence though there might be real frauds but majority i assume are just fabricated.
SO adding net bills and mobile bills etc is not just
Yes, there are cases like yours where its not your mistake. But I am not sure how to deal with cases like this . I suggest better resolve it with your company asap and take NOC !
I think this is a BS idea and if this is what lies in store for us in future, many innocent people will be unjustly affected by this. Sometimes it happens that the customer was not at fault for not clearing his dues.
Take my case with Tikona for example. We all know how crappy Internet Services are in India and the reliability of most ISPs is laughable. My Net connection from Tikona was down for over 2 months and repeated pleas to the Customer Care to get it fixed didn’t yield any results. Their technical guys gave a few visits but left without success and in the end started blaming the company itself for providing inferior equipment.
Finally, I had no choice but to ask them to disconnect my connection but they demanded I clear my dues first. Why should I pay for 2 month connection charges when I didn’t enjoy the services during that period? I outright refused and they forcefully kept the connection alive for another 3 months before disconnecting. But the dues snowballed to somewhere around 6k by then even though I didn’t use their service at all.
There are hundreds and thousands of dispute cases like this all over India for all kinds of services, be it Internet or Mobile Postpaid, where the customer was not at fault. Do you think we should be made to pay dearly because of this when it comes to taking loans which are altogether different matter?
Yes Anjan
Agree with you.. but then its like for mass , the in that some innocent people are bound to face issue . Not sure how can this be handled !
Manish,
I have two Airtel post paid connection with me from 7 months, but there was problem to submit the bill by manually, the network don’t have enough counter in my city, no body bother to collect the payment directly as I told them again & again. Write now they want the whole bill amount from me with the last fine also and the connection is already does not exists.
I want to know the problem is effect my cibil score. Also if I want to settlement the bill amount with Airtel that also can effect or not in cibil. Kindly advise me soon manish.
From
Khushi……..
Right now may be your data is not with CIBIL, but better pay back the full amount so that it does not go in cibil in future.
Hi,
I read this complete forum posts and its really informative and motivating to participate.
I had Airtel broadband 2 years back, 7th month i got something like misc charges 1100 extra, I enquired in customer care and went here and there but was fed up and threw the connection just like that(not cancelled). Took bsnl and going on. Will this affect me because we relocated as well, there is absolutely no way to trace back and pay up and I dont want to pay since im not liable for those charges. My opinion would be, if they implement ‘Any Bill – CIBIL’, they should not look into the past. They should encourage people to have a fresh start like “from now on things are not like before” and there should be a portal to post discripancies which caused them to default a pay. If the reason and proof is legit, their credit should go untouched.
I have a question for you Manish,
I saw somewhere in some forum that using credit cards too much puts your credits down. I have 4 credit cards and I use it liberally, If my friend is buying a laptop, I take his cash and swipe my card at much more instances as such. But I pay in advace before swiping if my purchase is going to be more than my credit limit. What would you suggest me on this?
Deepak
Its not “too much use” … but what you need to look at is , are you touching your credit limit often ? If your limit is 1 lac , better not to spend more than 50% of it .
Dear sir
I think the CIBIL credit rating is not the correct way of judging the customers repayment capability. The financial institution which is offering a loan facility collects all the documents needed and if the customer is a defaulter he is liable to loose the property attached or the guarantor has to stand for his repayment or the bank may get court attachment for his salary recovery. When such type of security is given to the bank why they need to check his past credit history. customer or the service provider may be a defaulter for the small transactions which in turn affects the big recoverable transactions. It is sure that even the financial institutions loose the customers. Why the banks think the CIR given by the CIBIL is final? Does CIBIL know how difficult is to get loan for an aam admi? why again they made too difficult to get loans? who is getting profit out of it? is it constitutionally approved body? why banks are behind it?
I will be happy if you could answer me Mr.Manish sir.
I dont think bank will agree to that logic , The first motive of the bank is to get the money back from the person only, they dont want to rely on the “worst cases” . Also this is the standard method of evaluating the candidates world wide .
Manish
Hi Manish,
I accept this is a progressive step towards betterment. But my biggest concern is why all of these progressive step are just favouring the companies and business organizations.
I have few bitter experiments in the above concern, they are listed below:
1. Close to a decade back I have to submit the post-paid sim-card of my uncle at Airtel office. He himself has closed the connection but final authorization will be given only after sumission of sim-card. I tried to submit the sim-card 4-5 times but each time they do not accept the submission citing that I have to come to office by 6 PM (although their office timming were 8 PM). How and why a srudent leave their college coz of the outlet self-maid rules?
2. During my college days I defaulted on my Airtel broadband payment because they were not ready to take cheque payment and only cash at counter. I along -with my friends tried 3 times to pay but finally gave and defaulted on the payments.
3. When I started my job, I was using Reliance post-paid connect from last 3+ yrs, because of some personal reason I just cant change my roaming number for 3-4 months. I asked the Reliance outlet to issue me a new connection based on my existing connection as well as other available details (I dont have a local address proof); they asked me to keep coming to office 3-4 times (each trip costed in 150 bucks) finally I gave up the idea and then obiously I defaulted. Was my inetnsion wrong? No it was just the situation created by the outlet which forced me to default.
4. I had a Tata broadband connection; because of their technical reason they were forced to remove the connection. Submitted all the equipments, raised a proper request of termination and asked them to adjust the security against the usage and return the remaing amount. Never happened, they generated new bills (without any equipment); I followed via e-mails (a lot of communications) finally never got my money back after submitteing all the proof and gave-up. At the end I am a defaulter even when I have to get the remaining money. Who have a bad intention now?
5. We paid all the outstanding dues and submitted the equipment to the Reliance boradband; never knew that a proper closer of connection letter have to be collected and the person who collected the equipment never updated that to the system. My fiend still getting calls for equipment payments. Whose fault is this?
6. My dad submitted the request letter for termination of tata cdma connection, never knew about a receiving letter agains the same; I informed him and he also never cared now the outlet guy just never cared to submit the termination letter we never used the mobile after that, still the fault is of the user.
7. Few months back I changed my address ( the new address is just 2 km away from the last one); Hathway technical team said (by sending an e-mail) they cant provide the service; technical team asked the billing team to close the service by keeping me in cc. I also send a details mail asking them that plz close the service collect the equipemt and send me the closure letter. Never happened. Still they are charging the bill and send me SMS updates and giving me calls for payment. Whose intention is malicious?
The root of these problem is the target for these selling guys as wellas recovery of the max amount. Actual rules of companies are different and the outlet change is as per their own ease and requirements. Customer never know or informed of the actual rules and regulations.
Why should only the end retail user bears the pain? Whenever government made any rule favouring us these companies get it twisted in their own favour. (One of the biggest example is not implementing the DoT recomendation of abolishing the roaming charges, one number for complete India. it may increase the cost but many people will be happy)
Thanks,
Swetank
Swetank
Thanks for putting your experiences in such a long comment , appreciated , I agree that somewhere companies are at fault , but then you have to fight back , if you have some issues because of these , you need to reach the consumer court, but most of the people do not do !
Manish,
I know that we have the option of consumer court. But is the procedure easy and fast enough? I never approached a consumer court so do not have the first hand information. But if I or any one else compare the worth of these case in term of once daily wadge and the amount at fault, its not worth the fight. I know this is a bad attitude towards the problem; but why should a consumer loose more money. If the reward or fine is appropriate then definitely the consumer will fight for it.
I know that someones sincere effort has forced RBI to ask the banks to clear the cheques within 3 business day; before that banks use to earn a lot of interest by delaying these kind of clearances.
This same case have to be applied for Personal load disbursement. Once I paid a interest of 425 rupee just for 3 days but the bank issued me a cheque for the PL payment at the end of the day and again it took 2-3 days for clearance. I think here as a consumer I should have been given 425 rupee more?
Hope I am able to make some sense?
Thanks,
swetank
IN that case you can do one thing , If you are clear that as per law the bank has not done something in right manner, better go to akosha.in and ask them to file a consumer complaint , they have successfully helped a lot of people .
Dear Sir,
As stated above CIBIL will take note of the past defaulters but in case if the default is done due to reasons beyound the controll and finally the payments for outstanding loan with penalty is done what is the meanse to get the name out of FIBIL of negative list.
Thanks and regards
B G Jadeja
I dont think there is any distinction like that is made, a default is a default from CIBIL Perspective !
It may turned out to be a good step also. There are possibilities of following:
1> Utility companies may be forced to streamline their billing, customer complain addressing.
2> Banks will give advertise saying : “We dont see credit rating: Come to us.” to attract their customers.
Situation may turn around in favour of consumer also. I hope once any utility company accept payment with late fee or penalty they will not report CIBIL negetively coz they already punished the customer with extra money. Lets hope these kind of rules are just the survival policy of banks in economic slowdown. After slowdown is over these practices will loose its purpose.
Thanks
Thanks for your view Avik !
This is another means of harassing the “aam aadmi”. What about the credit history of babus, netas etc. ?
Amit
Yes .. it might be , just like whats happening due to CIBIL !
This is the right move. First, instead of loading the paying habits , the CBIL should upload the defaulters list of Telephone companies /Insurance companies etc etc and now correlate .Then slowly it should be streamlined with the payment of bills . As it contains voluminous data etc step by step approach with reasons for late payment etc should be established .Otherwise it will lead to problems
Thanks for your views Bala !
what if i have prepaid connection :D?
In that case you dont need to worry , we are talking about BILLS which you need to pay regularly with compulsion !
Hi Manish,
This is a good step to be taken by CIBIL..I have observed a lot of people are not worried at all for paying the bills in a timely manner..even when they change their address..they failed to collect all the bank correspondence at the old address..by introduction of this step,i guess people will pay attention to this sily mistakes..nice article as well..
Thanks for your views Maulik !
looks like we should be ready for more harassment. Poor consumers. Loan Sharks and Big companies are ready to swallow you. Good luck guys. The idea is faulty. Will also lead to more corruption in Private sector, more middle men.
As we are ruled by highly retarded guys in policy making bodies and highly self-centric, willing to go at any length to make profit and cheat poor consumers, there will be a new ware of corruption, harassment, suicides and much more..
Good luck guys
The problem with such a system is that it has a one sided approach. A good number of the payment default cases actually result from the service provider (whether its BSNL or Airtel or any credit card provide ) billing the customer wrongly and the customer (rightfully) not willing to accept the same. In such cases CIBIL may spoil the person’s rating just on the basis of feedback from service provider, without getting the person’s point-of-view.
It is very important to put in place( right from the roll-out stage) a strong mechanism to allow the person’s point-of-view . And in case the service-provider’s feedback is proved to be misleading, the the service provider should be ‘de-rated”-or his feedbaks should be disallowed to be used in future for credit rating purpose.
Saket
Yes .. i agree with you that its important to have a look at what the customer has to say .. but at the same time I have seen that most of the times, people are not clear about the rules and policies about penality and charges and hence the quarral !
Thanks for your views Anoop .. lets hope its implemented properly !
Manish,
Why would health insurance premium qualify for credit reporting? It is kind of pre-paid right. Unless I pay premium for year, I don’t get insurance cover. If I am not satisfied with health insurer, I will stop paying premium and stop the cover. Why should this affect my credit rating?
Vineet
I think it will be reported if you renew your policy after the grace period. If you cancel your policy then it should not be reported.
Vineet
Yes that makes sense .. but not sure why they might have health insurance as well in this
if policy payment is done in grace period and ECS rejections are reported to cibil ?
Rama
No , its not reported at all !
Dear Manish,
I think CIBIL is trying to cultivate good habits of paying the utility bills promptly. Secondly, why all this hulla-gulla when policy is yet to be put on public domain? Thirdly, anything new comes, why should anyone jump to raise oppositions? I am afraid, we Indians are too skeptical! New is not welcome because we are used to exploit lacunae, bottlenecks and pitfalls of old systems for our not so good intentions!
I am sure many members of our Forum may not like my opinion because it pinches on our mediocrity.
I am therefore sorry but I must admit these things honestly.
A V Gosavi
Everyone has right to express their views just like you did. I don’t know how it makes them skeptical and mediocre and you honest.
May be CIBIL’s intentions are good but don’t you think there is any chance that such things will be misused to harass general public? Hope you are aware how manual errors are already making life miserable of some people’s rating and credibility. That is all people here are concerned about.
And one more request, please don’t drag 1.3 billion population of India into this conversation by making statements like “we Indians are too skeptical.” May be people you have come across are that way but they don’t represent the entire population of this country.
I am sorry if I have hurt a big population of India of which Vivek K is representative. Manual errors are common but when corrupt people exploit and intentionally cast malafides, not only those people are to be blamed, it is anxiety of honest people like Anna Hazare for generations of, not only his times but of times immemorial ahead. I believe I have expressed the same worry and anxiety about tendency, attitude and impatience of our people.
Anyway, I am sorry again for hurting Vivek K.
A V Gosavi.
I think CIBIL is trying to cultivate good habits of paying the utility bills promptly.
— At what cost ? Why CIBIL is more interested in to cultivate good habits of paying the utility bills ?
Secondly, why all this hulla-gulla when policy is yet to be put on public domain?
— Nobody aware when CIBIL formed and their intentions. But now many people because of banks / credit card companies errors , suffering a lot. There is no proper justifiable mechanism to remove your name from the list. Is it there ?
Thirdly, anything new comes, why should anyone jump to raise oppositions?
— Because people are afraid. They could remember the history. I could remember how my team mate suffered due to mis billing and got struck up CIBIL-Loan Game.
I suffered with my mobile and ISP provider for the bills they generated, late charges on the bills. The issue is I never used that service at all.
I am afraid, we Indians are too skeptical! New is not welcome because we are used to exploit lacunae, bottlenecks and pitfalls of old systems for our not so good intentions!
— In India, either new laws for not to support the consumer interests even if they come up with some, you need to run post to pillar to get the justice for the same. So we are suspicious about the new laws , rules and everything. The scepticism is there for the valid reasons.
I second what Mr. karthikeyan said in his post,
“— Nobody aware when CIBIL formed and their intentions. But now many people because of banks / credit card companies errors , suffering a lot. There is no proper justifiable mechanism to remove your name from the list. Is it there ?”
1. Nobody knows their intentions when CIBIL formed
2. With whom permission they added our names
3. CIBIL not informing people when they incresed / decreased their score
4. They not inform people at what reason they are decreasing or increasing their score
5. Why not we can remove our name from CIBIL
Why I am saying because one of my friend was defaulted in his home loan for couples of EMI (which decreased his score like anything) but after that he has closed the loan in a year before time, now after 1 year still he is unable to get another loan.
He had a problem long back but once he cleared his loan before time then CIBIL should increased his score which they didn’t and now he is suffering.
There is no transparency in CIBIL that at what reason(s) / time they increase/decrease scores of individual.
I partially support what you say Vishal for the reason that :
why was CIBIL formed ? to make money by taking Rs 250/450 odd for asking for a score.
Person is not informed by CIBIL if his name is reported which makes the whole process one sided which means CIBIL was formed by Finance companies and others with vested interests.
We should approach consumer forum for issues related to CIBIL as they are victimising us by giving such scores.
Further now they are going to add mobile bills and insurance into thier kitty which makes biz for CIBIL more lucrative.
we have been living without CIBIL all these years and we can live without it so why not all consumers should unite we also start rating companies and banks which cheat consumers but taking processing charges and franking charges and valuation charges and then reject our loan applications and dont refund our monies. so CIBIL bhai what rating our your giving to these cheating banks and finance companies
Last month I stopped my icici online life term policy cover of 30Lacs after enjoying for an year. Reason being I am waiting for lic online term to arrive and moreover my new company provide life cover of 50Lacs. So if icici shares this info to cibil, it will be sad that my score will affect! How can I prevent this from happening?
Sandeep
I dont think you should worry on this .. this will not be reported to CIBIL