Credit Rating: How it works and How to improve it discussion area

LittleMissAspie

Thanks Moggles, there is nothing I can do but wait then. I feel a bit calmer now, this has been worrying.

I'm planning to check out the Experian report too but it will have to wait until after my holiday. I only wanted the card for free foreign purchases but will have to get pre-paid card instead now. Didn't even want their stinkin credit lol.

flat3d

can anyone help...

I have 2 defaults on my credit rating which are not my fault. to cut a long story short i ordered a contract mobile with Orange via the Carphone Warehouse Website.the phone got stolen in transit and they sent me another, which i subsequently returned within 5 days of receipt. It wasn't until i kept receiving bills for both that I enquired further and found out that neither contract had been cancelled by CPW.
It then took 18 months for Carphone warehouse to refund the cost of the first contract (the stolen phone) and a further year for the 2nd contract fees to be refunded.
Now i have been left with 2 - Default Satisfied's on my rating, which Orange have agreed to remove so long as the CPW provide a letter or liability that it was their mistake.
Firstly, if they will not provide this letter will the 2 cheques they sent me be enough evidence,
and secondly, is there anything I can claim from CPW as compensation for them having screwed up my credit rating for the last 2 and a half years?! i've not been able to get credit since jan 2007.

any help would be most appreciated, even if its only a push in the right direction of who to ask!

thank you

teddyco

I have a question about my wife's credit score.

We recently applied for a personal loan using several of the banks listed on this website and have been turned down for all except Mark's and Spencer's.

We have opened and closed several credit card accounts that have been used over the past two years for swapping from one 0% rate to the next, but every payment was made on time and without any trouble. My wife also has one credit card with a £2600 balance on 0% until March, and another card with very low interest rate with a £400 balance.

We applied for the M & S loan for £8000, 8.8% @ 6 years with a monthly payment of roughly £143, but they came back with a worse offer of 11.7% with monthly payments of £155.00 and a higher repayment amount.

There were four others that we applied for, but they were all immediately declined. I believe they were ASDA Finance, CoOperative, Abbey, and Sainsbury's Finance.

I ordered a copy of my wife's credit report and everything is 'Satisfactory' or 'Settled' without one glitch or fault on my wife's part.

Why did she get denied when she is a good risk? Is this because we already have two credit cards with credit limits? If we pay these off, will we get the loan at the rate we want?

Thanks!

Moggles_2

flat3d wrote: »

I have 2 defaults on my credit rating which are not my fault. I ordered a contract mobile with Orange via the Carphone Warehouse Website. The phone got stolen in transit and they sent me another, which i subsequently returned within 5 days of receipt. It wasn't until i kept receiving bills for both that I enquired further and found out that neither contract had been cancelled by CPW.
It took 18 months for Carphone warehouse to refund the cost of the first contract (the stolen phone) and a further year for the 2nd contract fees to be refunded. Now i have been left with 2 Default Satisfied's on my rating, which Orange have agreed to remove so long as the CPW provide a letter or liability that it was their mistake. Firstly, if they will not provide this letter and secondly, is there anything I can claim from CPW as compensation for them having screwed up my credit rating for the last 2 and a half years? I've not been able to get credit since Jan 2007.

Very often, publicity is your best weapon in a case like this.

Which national daily newspaper do you read? I'd send a letter/e-mail to its consumer advice column and you might find Carphone Warehouse moves quite quickly

Moggles_2

teddyco wrote: »

I have a question about my wife's credit score ... I ordered a copy of my wife's credit report and everything is 'satisfactory' or 'settled' without one glitch or fault on my wife's part.

May I ask where you ordered your wife's credit report from?

Is this because we already have two credit cards with credit limits?

You cannot hold credit cards jointly. One of you is the principle card holder and is solely responsible for managing the account.

If you share a financial product (eg. joint bank account, mortgage) with her, then you are financially linked. If that's the case, I would check your own credit files as well. For help, see page 1 of the *How to obtain credit reports* sticky.

Moggles_2

teddyco wrote: »

It was ordered from Experian Credit Expert.

That's fine.

We cannot be absolutely certain which loan providers report to/search a particular agency's files (lenders do not disclose this information), but it's known that most use Experian, so that one matters most.

Unless your wife has a lower than average income, two credit cards is certainly not excessive. Paying these off would make no difference, IMO.

CannyJock

teddyco wrote: »

We applied for the M & S loan for £8000, 8.8% @ 6 years with a monthly payment of roughly £143, but they came back with a worse offer of 11.7% with monthly payments of £155.00 and a higher repayment amount.

There were four others that we applied for, but they were all immediately declined. I believe they were ASDA Finance, CoOperative, Abbey, and Sainsbury's Finance.

The 5 applications won't have helped. What's curious is that the 2nd application was rejected, the 3rd, 4th and 5th I could understand the rejection because of the previous applications.

Basically, the applications have done some short-term damage to your credit score so you need to wait 6 months before applying for any more. Firing in more applications won't help once you've hit the rejection wall.

moatmeister

I have a good income an i believe a reasonable credit rating with no ccjs etc, but 1 missed payment last feb due to bank error on a loan which was paid the next day by debit card.

I have 3 outstanding personal loans totalling about £25k all generally running well apart from the missed payment above.

Want to apply for a mortgage to buy a property for £295k very soon. Looking at a 70% loan. Have £100k, £90k as a cash deposit and £10k for upfront costs. Its just enough, not much spare. Possibly have access to a bit more if necessary but assuming affordability is ok, I need specific advice on whether I should use some of the cash to pay off the personal loans before applying (which would then possibly mean a bigger mortgage with a higher LTV) and maybe boost my credit rating, or save the cash, keep the loans running which are being paid ok and put down a larger deposit with a lower LTV (with the personal loans still running in the background) These would be then settled fully when a building plot gets sold. Obviously a larger deposit and less borrowing would be more favourable to the lender but I feel I would rather keep the loans running and have more ready cash for unforeseen costs in the short term as there will no doubt be some immeadiate building work required by the mortgage company.

What I want to know is in these circumstances how much will keeping the loans affect the chances of being granted the full mortgage package? and how much weighting do the mortgage lenders put on the credit report as part of the overall decision?

CannyJock

This guide to stoozing and mortgages is specific to credit cards and uses 5% min repayment. But the principle is that they look at your total annual payments and deduct this from your salary to get a net salary position, then multiply this by 4 to get your maximum mortgage. You should be able to do the same thing based on your annual repayments and salary figures.

No guarantees, but this was put together after consulting a variety of mortgage brokers.

You don't mention the APR on the loans.

The one missed payment won't be relevant if it's a one-time only thing.

moatmeister

So are you saying that actually having the loans will not affect my credit rating as long as they are being serviced ok?