They refuse you a phone on instalments and never say why

You ask for a phone in instalments in a shop, the assistant types in your ID number, waits twenty seconds and tells you it cannot be done. He does not tell you why. You pay your bills, so you walk out assuming there is an error in the system. There usually is an error, but it is not in the shop's system: it is in a defaulters' register where you appear over something from years ago.

In Spain these registers are called credit information systems, and the big ones are ASNEF-Equifax and Experian. They are private companies, and article 20 of Organic Law 3/2018 on data protection sets them six requirements for an entry to be presumed lawful. When one of them fails, the entry loses that presumption and its deletion can be requested, first from whoever put it there and then from the Spanish Data Protection Agency.

Of the six, two bring down most old entries and almost nobody knows them.

The first is the time limit, letter d). The data may only sit in the file while the non-payment persists, and with an absolute ceiling of five years from the due date of the obligation. Five years from the due date, not from the last reminder they sent you: the reminders do not restart the clock. And since the data only lives while the non-payment persists, paying the debt also takes it out, even if it is two months old.

The second is the warning, letter c). The company running the file has to notify you that it has put you in and explain your rights, and the law gives thirty days from the moment the creditor reports the debt to the system, a period during which the data stays blocked. If that warning never reached you, that failure alone is enough to request deletion.

There is a third letter that is made for the scene in the shop. Letter f) says that if the consultation of the file is the reason you are not given the contract, whoever consulted it has to inform you of the result of that consultation. It can be asked for on the spot, at the counter, because it is an obligation of whoever runs the check.

And there is one condition worth not misreading, letter b): the debt must be certain, due and payable, and must not have been challenged by you through an administrative or judicial route, nor in a binding dispute resolution procedure. A written complaint to the company itself does not count as any of the three.

Three steps.

1. Request access to the two big files. It is free, the European data protection regulation grants it, and it is done through the data subject request form of ASNEF-Equifax and of Experian, attaching a copy of your ID. They have one month to answer and must tell you what data they hold, who put it there and what date it bears.

2. Request erasure in writing from the creditor and from the file. An email with your ID number, the exact entry and the letter that fails. Another month to reply.

3. If they ignore you, complain to the Agency. Through their electronic office, free, with no lawyer and no court agent.

Everything hangs on one piece of information you do not have and they do: the due date, written in their own hand. Ask for it through the data subject request form, keep the acknowledgement with its date, and count five years from there.