Lucy* receives a monthly credit report to ensure she maintains her excellent credit score.  

So when she noticed it had dropped significantly last November, she was left scratching her head.

She had initially signed up with a credit report agency because she had read it was good practice to see if a debt had been assigned mistakenly.

Her precautions worked in her favour after she realised that the drop in her score had not been her doing, but a mistake by Octopus Energy.

What followed was months of back and forth between the energy company and her credit agency until it could be resolved. 

Mysterious payment arrears

Lucy noticed in her 'impeccable' credit report that her declining score had been attributed to late payments with Octopus Energy.

She is an Octopus customer for the home she lives in but always keeps a healthy credit balance. 

She soon realised the payment arrears had been attributed to a leased property, of which she holds the freehold.

Lucy has owned the property in north London for many years but has never lived in it nor taken out any utilities there. 

Instead, she rents out one of the maisonettes and another person holds the leasehold for the other.

She twigged that the arrears of £265 had been built up by one of the leaseholders, who subsequently sent emails to Octopus to say the liability was his and not Lucy's.

Octopus confirmed to him that it had made an error in assigning the leased property to Lucy and said it had requested to update the details to avoid any further confusion.

The energy giant also told Lucy there had been a discrepancy and they had requested to remove all missed payment markers.

Despite chasing Octopus and the credit agency Transunion for months, the debt markers remained.

In March, it transpired that the database had two addresses for the maisonettes but when the other leaseholders' tenant moved out, the name defaulted to Lucy as the freeholder.

Still, nothing had changed for Lucy. She says her bank account had slashed her credit card limit to £500, despite never being in arrears. Something she attributes directly to the debt markers.

When Lucy got in touch with This Is Money, she said she had always had an impeccable credit rating and she was 'genuinely worried and concerned about the long-term impact this will have on me and my family.'

Octopus soon confirmed to Lucy that the marker had been placed against her name mistakenly and it would be removed.

Unfortunately, Lucy was not convinced. Since November, she had received assurances that the issue would be resolved when it had not.

Land registry mistake 

When This Is Money contacted Octopus, it said it had been an individual error from one of its operations teams. 

When it looked into who was liable for the debt for the leased property, Lucy's details as a freeholder of the property were mistakenly taken from land registry records, rather than the leaseholder.

A spokesman for Octopus Energy said: 'The marker on Lucy's account with the debt collector has since been removed and we have agreed to provide her with a £500 goodwill gesture to her account, which has since been refunded to her bank account. She is happy with the outcome.'

This Is Money also got in touch with Transunion to ask whether her credit score would be changed to reflect Octopus' mistake.

A spokesperson said: 'The error on the credit report occurred due to Octopus Energy reporting to Transunion an account that the consumer was not liable for.

'Since this complaint was filed, Octopus has amended the data on their end and the consumer has been contacted by our team and notified that their dispute has been successful. 

'The account has now been removed from their report. It is important to note that Transunion can only correct information once a lender has confirmed the disputed information.

'Although the account has been successfully removed, it is possible that some residual data issues may still arise. 

'Therefore, the matter has been escalated and our teams will ensure that this matter is treated as a priority case.'

Lucy has chosen to donate her £500 payment to the charity Radical Recruit, who helps the marginalised get into the workplace.

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