Credit check to reduce my overdraft?

Misty_Blue

I've paid off the overdraft on one of my accounts and plan to pay off the other in the same way - bit by bit as and when I can. I called Natwest today and asked if I could reduce my overdraft by £50. They took my details and passed me through to "the right department." This turned out to be someone trying to sell me a loan and/or credit card, and when I refused both and asked again to reduce my overdraft, he said "I can do it if you really want, but you do understand you'll have to be credit checked?"

I said: "You're telling me I have to be credit checked to reduce my overdraft?" and he replied that yes, they carry out a credit check for reducing an overdraft in the same way they would for increasing it. As mentioned, I paid off another overdraft and this was never mentioned. Is this true or are Natwest just trying to keep me paying more interest each month?

teeni

I was told the same by Barclays, the lady there advised me to reduce my overdraft usage and then apply for it to be reduced once it had reached the level i wanted it to be.

YorkshireBoy

Why not leave the overdraft facility as it is. After all, it's only there for an emergency.

And if you have an emergency, you'll use the banks money anyway...with or without their permission won't you? Far cheaper to leave it where it is?

All that's required is a little willpower...surely?

Misty_Blue

YorkshireBoy wrote: »

All that's required is a little willpower...surely?

Actually, that's how I paid off my other overdraft - let the money build up until it was well in the black and then wipe-out the overdraft in one go. I just found it very surprising that a bank would want to credit check to reduce a debt.

ShelfStacker_3

If NatWest do that, they're utter cretins. Really. Never heard of anyone being credit checked because they wanted LESS debt.

Extant

teeni wrote: »

I was told the same by Barclays, the lady there advised me to reduce my overdraft usage and then apply for it to be reduced once it had reached the level i wanted it to be.

Eh? Complain about that, that's blatantly wrong. Any member of sales staff will have access to Lending Control and can manually increase or decrease overdrafts. Except they get sacked for increasing them.

CG19a

I was in the same boat as yourself with Natwest at one point. It was explained to me as a flaw in their system. If you have a £500 overdraft and want to lower it to £450 then the way it apparently operates is that you apply for a "new" overdraft of £450 hence the reason why it needs a credit check etc. This is how it was explained to me by the guy on the phone. I did manage to reduce mine though without a credit check by moaning enough.

nimbo

when i was reducing my old student overdraft with llyods i specifically asked if i would be dredit checked as i didn't want a load of footprints on my recored.... how backwards of natwest...

(i could have just done it in one go wheni had paid it all of but i had no will power, and it was satisfying to see it slowly decreasing...)

MABLE

So I assume then when banks want to reduce an overdraft they credit score before hand. Also I had letter from Lloyds about a month ago saying as I did not use all my overdraft facility they would reduce it by £3,000 on the 24.12.
However to date this has never happened. I assume then my credit score at this moment in time was not high enough for it to be reduced.

maxsquared

I think reducing overdraft is the same as getting a new overdraft, so basically if you had £1000 overdraft and want to reduce to £500, instead of taking £500 off your current overdraft, your £1000 overdraft will be canceled and you are reapplying £500 overdraft.

CDes

When I worked for HSBC overdraft reductions would never be credit checked but all overdraft increases on ordinary accounts had to be credit checked. So the reason you might be getting transferred is because only the staff who also do loans etc are the ones who can run the credit checks.

Credit checking for a reduction seems very odd to me but as others have said why not just leave the facility there.