Our sad time with Smile

Q As we are interested in ethical banking, we recently tried to open a joint account with Smile. However, despite initially confirming that it would be happy to open the account, Smile then told us our application had been rejected.

After a great number of phone calls, the unhelpful customer service team eventually told us there was a discrepancy between the address on our application and the address on our credit file.

I'm not sure what this means: we moved house only once, in 2000, after coming to live in this country in 1995. Since Smile won't tell me more and it considers this case to be closed, there's little I can do to clarify things. Is there any way you can help?

DB

A Having looked at the responses from Smile, my suspicion is that there is a definite error somewhere.

All banks run credit searches on consumers who apply for their products and services, and some conduct a credit score. This is calculated using various bits of information about the applicants, such as whether they are on the electoral register, how long they have lived at their current address, whether they are employed, and what their credit history is.

Your credit history should be fine, seeing as you have a paid-off mortgage and a couple of credit cards with zero balances. But if, as Smile's letter suggests, the address you have supplied doesn't match that on your credit record, there is a problem. Did you update your address with all your credit providers after your move? If not, some financial institutions might still have you listed as living at your old address.

I would urge you to get your credit record from both Experian and Equifax. It only costs £2 and it will allow you to see where the mistake is. If you do find an error, you have the right to have it corrected - and to have any institution that has recently run a search on you contacted with the updated, corrected information.