The case

Two years ago, Mr. L. moved into his new home. In the stress of moving, however, he forgot to pay the bills. He had not received any reminders. By then, he would have received an enforcement notice. The claim had been settled in the meantime. This was also noted in his SCHUFA database. Now he wanted the SCHUFA entry to be deleted. He had contacted the court, the debt collection agency and SCHUFA, but had not been able to achieve anything. It was also never properly checked whether the SCHUFA entry was correct. He had never received any payment reminders. He urgently needed a credit card for upcoming business trips abroad, which he would not receive if the entry was stored for three years. Mr. L asks the SCHUFA ombudsperson to look into his case.

The decision

After examining all the documents available to him, the ombudsperson comes to the conclusion that the report to SCHUFA was rightly made. This means that the further storage of the data is also lawful. The reason for this is that the claim was legally enforceable. The ombudsperson informs Mr. L. that the statutory reporting requirements have been met due to the enforcement order. It therefore does not matter whether Mr. L. has received reminders. It is sufficient that a legally binding and enforceable title has been obtained for a due claim. For this reason, the payment default could be reported to SCHUFA. The ombudsperson informs Mr. L. that the information reported to SCHUFA is subject to certain defined retention periods, which are set out in the Code of Conduct and have been approved by the supervisory authorities. The storage of the information is important for the risk assessment of the SCHUFA contractual partners. Since Mr. L. had also not presented any other circumstances that would give rise to an overriding interest on the part of SCHUFA or special personal circumstances that would justify deletion of the data, the ombudsperson was unable to do anything for Mr. L. in this case.