What your credit score really means

Interesting thread , my credit score , good with equifax/ clearscore , awful with mse credit club. All had me not on the electoral role ( i have always been on it ).
Felt the scores were / are BS.

I applied for a card i might get with my rating from Capital , got it , they found me on the electoral roll.

6 months later score keeps going down , i think i am doing well with my money.
What the hell , Capital apr is too high (over 30%)

Apply for lower Vanquis card with zero chance of success at 24%apr
I was accepted , found on electoral roll and offered a limit of a thousand pounds.

Car blows up , only loan i would get for two grand was at an apr of 55.9% according to the credit experts.

Applied to my bank Clydesdale for a loan , approved and they found me on the electoral roll.

In short , they say i am not on the roll , all the lenders etc know i am and can find me , not one agency could , one even mixed me up with my son as we have a similar name ?

The whole credit rating game is just that , total rubbish. Please don't sweat over your ratings , it means nothing.

Cancelling will eventually improve it. Applying will have created a search that will reduce your rating for about three to twelve months, depending on the place you're applying to.

If you cancelled within the first month or so there might not even be a record of anything other than an application search on your credit record. If that's the case it would have no more effect than any other application search that results in no card. A check of your credit reports a couple of months after closing should be long enough for you to know if this happened.

Not something you need to worry about, just a bit of a waste and not something you should really have done. No big deal at all.

As the title, does anyone know what info gets sent by Barclaycard to the CRAs for their "monthly" update and when? Is it the closing statement balance showing on the statement date or the balance owing at the end of the calender month or something more random??

Since a year ago when I discovered I had a CCJ and 3 defaults I’ve become very diligent with my credit report. Arguably taking it too far.

Anyhow, it’s been interesting to see how scores from the CRAs fluctuate.

At the moment I’m fair/good with Equifax, at c.400. But very poor with Experian (c475) with identical data. I was up at c. 700 with Experian last month, but since transferred my current account to Barclays and opened a Barclaycard.

In short, Experian have scored me down as much for opening two new credit accounts as they did for having an additional 2 defaults 12 months ago.

The scoring system means jack. The content tells a far more accurate story. My score may be lower now than 12 months ago, but unless you’re a clinical idiot, you’d see the content of my credit file is a world a part from 12 months ago.

I've checked my credit scores on the 3 main UK sites. My ratings are 464/700 : 581/700 and 960/999. There appears to be no reason for these wide disparencies. Also, Martin commented that credit scoring agencies don't take salary into account. Neither do they take savings into account in their assessments. I was given a relatively small credit card limit despite having over 100x the limit in readily available cash savings.