I had a joint loan with HSBC which was defaulted in 2008 and sold to LINK finance. HSBC forced us into amalgamating all our debts into a managed loan when we set up an agreement to pay with Consumer Credit counselling service by threatening us and repeated harassment. they then omitted to included my husband credit card into the managed loan so that the amount we agreed to pay didnt included this and needless to say we ended up reducing the amount we paid HSBC inorder to keep up the promised payemnts to the credit card. HSBC then threatened us because we reduced our payment to them by the corresponding amount. I ended up taking HSBC to FOS and got an apology and refund on the interest charged but HSBC still defaulted us and sold the debt to LINK finance. We settled the debt with LINK over 2 years ago and have a letter from them saying they will mark the debt as settled. Only HSBC shows up on my CRA file, both HSBC and LINK show up as two different debts on my husband, both showing a default, HSBC on 8th Feb 2008 and LINK on 13th Feb 2008. they are one and the same debt. the LINK record does show the balance as zero. but on both our credit files HSBC debt showed we still owed the full amount. I contacted HSBC in Oct 2012 who said they would mark it as settled and it does appear that for 2 months as zero balance but both our records for HSBC now show the full amount outstanding again. This is NOT a trivial amount either it is >£26K I have a number of questions: surely both HSBC and LINK shouldn't be on my husbands file? surely they are the same debt therefore only one default should be present? which one should it be? and shouldnt our CRA files show the same information as it was a joint account? seeing as HSBC should never have bullied us into taking out the managed loan (we were in a debt management plan and basically they were trying to get more than their fair share of our leftover money) and they cocked it up that actually we should never have had the default in the first place. can we petition to get it removed? are the CRA's at fault here too seeing as they have a duty to ensure the data they hold is correct. What can I do and where do I start in fixing this?