The 02 logo; Venkatraman Ramakrishnan

London, Jan. 31: Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, the scientist who uses a bicycle instead of a car and has not had a mobile phone before, recounted the history of what he feels has been consistently shabby treatment by O2, the phone company.

“Shortly after I received the Nobel Prize, I was inundated with phone calls and emails and felt the need to get a mobile phone to be reachable in a private way,” he said. “I went to the O2 store in Cambridge and asked to buy an iPhone. The young man was white, but I do not think he was racist in the least. He was trying to be very helpful and even went and asked his manager. The manager never saw me and just told him nothing could be done. The young man was apologetic about it.”

Ramakrishnan is based at the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology on the well-known Addenbrooke’s Hospital site in Cambridge.

“Although I am a head of division here, have owned a house in the UK since 1999 (and since 1983 in the US), have two major UK credit cards on which I charge £1,000 or more monthly, I was deemed insufficiently creditworthy and asked to pay a three-month deposit of £325,” he said. “I checked with the two credit bureaus they use and there is nothing wrong in my credit report. I then wrote to them (O2) and let them know my situation, but instead of redressing the issue by refunding the deposit, they said there was nothing they could do.”

He added: “I am outraged in principle that they should require this from someone so completely creditworthy — I have been given loans in excess of £200,000 in the UK for my house!”

Ramakrishnan recalled: “The shop wouldn’t budge. Then I wrote to their standard customer service and got a non-response. Then I wrote to their complaints department, and got a response from Martin Nicholson (O2 complaint review service), which basically said, ‘Sorry, our algorithms sometimes don’t work even if you have too little credit history’. But this is absurd, because I’ve owned a house which was mortgaged twice, once after it had been paid off in full.”

A spokesperson for O2 said after reviewing the correspondence between Ramakrishnan and the customer services representative that she was “very sorry to hear that Prof. Ramakrishnan was offended by our credit checking procedures. Every new contract customer is subject to a credit check. The process is fully automated using two external credit reference agencies, Equifax and Experian. The credit score is then factored into our internal benchmarking and the decision would either be a yes, no, or referral. We have no influence over individuals’ credit files, we simply act on the indication of the credit reference agency.”

She also said: “We strongly advise any customer who is not satisfied with the result of this checking procedure to arrange to see a copy of their credit file. For example, having little or no credit history in the UK (such as when a customer has lived abroad for a long time), or if they are not on the electoral roll can result in a poor credit file.”

The spokesperson added: “I am dismayed to hear that Prof. Ramakrishnan would suggest that this decision was in any way related to race. Whilst we are honoured to have a distinguished Nobel Prize winner amongst our customers, I can assure you that every customer is treated exactly the same regardless of their race, creed or colour and in accordance with the law. I hope this clears this matter up.”

However, the matter is far from resolved. There has been no response from O2 after it was pointed out that its version appears not to stand up to scrutiny.

Equifax and Experian acknowledge that Ramakrishnan’s absence from the electoral register may have caused an initial problem but both agencies distanced themselves from O2.

Neil Munroe, external affairs director for Equifax, commented: “Equifax would like to stress that it is down to each individual company’s lending criteria whether an application is granted. If an applicant is declined or is not offered the rate or deal expected by a consumer, the lender should indicate the reasons for their decision and if it is suggested that this is because of information on their credit file, the lender should indicate which credit reference agency was used by them so that the consumer can obtain a copy of their credit file to find out more.”

Ramakrishnan wants O2 to answer two questions: “What exactly about either report did they dislike enough to require me to pay a deposit? Why, after being told the facts in my case, did they not bother to make amends by refunding the deposit?

“The real problem is that even after I told them I was this year’s Nobel laureate in chemistry, that I had a good job, plenty of credit history, they refused to budge. So the people I fault are their complaint review service.”

The Nobel Prize winner had an afterthought: “It is the principle of the thing that annoys me. Life was simpler when I didn’t have a mobile!”