Hope somone can advise on this unbelievable situation - we've had a very successful business for the past 30 years, always been careful with finances and made sure that we never had any outstanding or late payments in our business or personal life. Never had reason to check our rating on credit reference agencies as very confident of our unblemished credit rating, that was until last Friday when took advantage of the free trial offer only to find that a company had left a search on my report last December, the reason given as 'outstanding debt'. Horrified, I googled the company concerened only to find that it is fact run by our so called 'friends' who we've recently met up with after 20 years gap, they operate as solicitors agents/investigators!! I Then decided to check my husbands credit file and discovered they have performed exactly the same search on him only 3 months later than mine. Can't believe what they've done to us, there is absolutely no lawful reason for anyone to search us for outstanding debts of any kind, they have abused our friendship and have breached their professional responsibilities leaving a detrimental 'outstanding debt' on our unblemished credit rating. We have informed Equifax and the ICO but want to know if this is a criminal matter, can we take legal action of any kind? So angry to think that they can get away with this type of thing and do they do this to other innocent people they meet? Comments please!