Meridian billing glitch wrongly flags 470 customers as in arrears on credit agency files

An electricity provider mistakenly told credit reporting agencies hundreds of its customers weren't up to date with paying their bills. Photo / Thinkstock

An electricity gentailer has apologised after nearly 500 customers were mistakenly flagged as being in arrears, information that was then automatically passed on to two credit reporting agencies.

A Meridian Energy customer told the Herald they were emailed today about the error, which the company has also reported to the Privacy Commissioner.

Meridian had “let some of our customers down”, the company’s chief customer officer Lisa Hannifin said.

“We’re in the process of moving around 450,000 customers on to a new billing platform. While that’s worked perfectly for most customers, we discovered an error that incorrectly flagged some customer accounts as being in arrears.

“This incorrect information was automatically shared with two credit reporting agencies, affecting around 470 customer accounts over the last few weeks.”

The automatic sharing of information with credit reporting agencies was standard process whenever an account was listed in arrears, Hannifin said.

Meridian is "incredibly sorry" for the error, a spokeswoman said. Photo / RNZ, Nate McKinnon

Those affected don’t need to do anything, she said.

“This was our error, and we’ve already fixed it. As soon as we spotted the mistake, we reached out to customers to acknowledge the error and assure them that we’d put things right.”

The credit agencies had removed the incorrect information after being contacted by Meridian, Hannifin said.

“We’ve also updated our internal processes to ensure this doesn’t happen again, and we’ve notified the Privacy Commissioner, as is our responsibility.

“We’re incredibly sorry for this error and the concern it has caused our customers.”

Customers could also contact the credit agencies involved – Experian (previously Illion) and Centrix – to request a copy of their current credit report, if they wished, the email to the Meridian customer who contacted the Herald said.

Experian could be reached online at www.experian.co.nz/consumer/order-credit-report or on 0800 733 707, and Centrix at www.centrix.co.nz/my-credit-score/ or by calling 0800 236 874.

“If you wish, you [also] have the right to lodge a complaint with [The Privacy Commissioner] at www.privacy.org.nz“, the email said.

The Privacy Commissioner couldn’t be contacted for comment.

A poor credit score can mean loan requests for items such as a car are turned down, or face higher interest rates.

Credit reports – also known as credit scores or credit history – were a detailed breakdown of a person’s borrowing history, including repayment of loans, and bill payments such as power, Sorted personal finance lead Tom Hartmann said.

People usually had a score between 300 and 850, with a lower score indicating a riskier borrower.

“It’s a measure of your ability to repay debt.”

A lower score could result in a lending request being turned down, or the terms of a loan could be less favourable, Hartmann said.

“If [lenders] think you’re more risky they’ll naturally protect themselves, which means they might … [charge] higher interest rates – they will price in the risk to themselves.”