I have had a small business for 20 years.
Business has been steady but obviously there are fluctuations.
But being a small business we file only abbreviated accounts, which don't show turnover, profit, etc.
The sole Director lives mostly from dividends.
One new supplier has just refused us credit, citing a credit report from Experian showing our suggested credit limit reduced suddenly from £12000 to £500.
They sent me a copy of the report, and one can see what has probably happened: I rarely draw dividends near the end of the company year (31 Dec), deferring them to after 5th April the following year, for obvious reasons. But in 2009 I did apparently draw one in December, and this reduced the cash in the bank.
The stupid formula which Experian use concluded we are going bust, and it says there is a 12:1 chance of us going bust in the next 12 months.
OK, it is dumb for any supplier to rely on these reports entirely, but this fairly big company evidently does exactly that.
So I tried to phone Experian, only to get another chimp call centre, and a message saying they charge £99 for any discussion of limited company reports!
This is pure and simple extortion.
Some years ago, a CCJ got registered against my company, because it was granted against a company of a similar name, and some chimp in the county court, or one of the credit reference agencies, entered the company name into his computer, up came ours, and he then used the co. registration number to make it stick.
With such a totally crappy process, charging £99 to put it right is disgusting.
I've written to their chief exec but am not expecting much of a response since the last cockup took me 6 months to sort out.