Credit Card misery

Lilith1980

Hi all, hope this is in the right place as I am new. I wondered if someone could point me in the right direction or let me know what my options are please.

I have Virgin Credit Card and I recently got a letter through the door to say my interest rate would be going up to 29.9% on everything - BTs, purchases, the lot. I might as well have a store card!

I managed to open up a Halifax 0% on BTs card and transferred some of the money off the credit card but I cannot increase my limit with Halifax until I have held the card for 6 months.

I did apply for another 0% card as well but was declined so I didnt want to try again as this wont do my credit rating any good.

Do I have any other options? Or am I stuck with this horrendous interest rate?!

Thanks

YorkshireBoy

Lilith1980 wrote: »

I did apply for another 0% card as well but was declined

Who with?...

Lilith1980

Hi, it was with Tesco. I think the 0% deal was for 13 months

YorkshireBoy

Which other cards do you have at the moment?

Lilith1980

Apologies, pressed the "thanks" button by mistake!

I have the Halifax Credit Card, Virgin Credit Card and I have a personal loan for about £11k with Alliance and Leicester (think that's at 7.9% roughly)

YorkshireBoy

That's a large loan!

Did they give you any indication of the reason for the decline?...over-indebtedness for example?

Obviously we know nothing (else) of your personal circumstances, but perhaps some further reading may help?...

Credit ratings & credit scoring:
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/credit-rating-credit-score
http://www.stoozing.com/g_score.htm

Who owns who (so you don't apply for cards run by providers you already have a card with, or have been recently declined by):
www.stoozing.com/cards.htm

It's possible another search won't harm your credit rating (too much, or for too long), but please do read the above articles first before diving straight in.

Good luck.

Lilith1980

Thanks :-)

Well the loan was to consolidate debts that myself and my husband had. He pays me half the payment each month into my current account but it had to go in my name as his credit rating is pretty bad.

I will take a look at those sites, thanks again

benf90

I don't mean for this to come across in the wrong way. But if you've consolidated debts once already and then gone on to spend more money on credit cards etc maybe a trip over to the Debt free wannabe section of this forum is a good idea also?

There's plenty of advice over there on ways to reduce the amount you spend so that the extra money saved can be used to clear debts quicker.

It can be fairly easy for some people to fall into the trap of constantly consolidating their debts without actually making any inroads into paying them off.

Lilith1980

Thanks Benf90, I will take a look at that section too.