Credit history

The_Boss

These are my current cards and time with lender.

Morgan Stanley - almost 5 years.
MBNA - almost 3 years.
Halifax - since last July.
NatWest - since November, but previously from december 1997 to May 2005.

I really dont like Morgan Stanley due to them stopping my card regulalry and rude staff. I want to cancel after my anniversary date for cashback in June, but will this have an adverse effect on my credit rating/score since I would have just ditched 5 years worth of history? Or would it have no effect since the last 36 months payments are still on my report?

The MBNA one is another I want to close (I needed it to book bmi flights, but will not need to do that anymore), so that could be another option for cancellation and possibly being offered another 0% deal for a while. Certainly more chance of being offered that than Morgan Stanley, and would be worthwhile since the whole point of closing one is to get another 0% card this summer.

empfun

The effect would possibly be positive since you're effective minimising the available credit you have significantly, assuming you have a high credit limit with your Morgan Stanley card. Your credit history goes back a number of years and you currently have other cards so it shouldn't really make much difference at all with the closing of this card.

The_Boss

Yep, £2000 limit on Morgan Stanley would be wiped out.

Thing is, I have been paying for my credit score for a while now on an experimental basis to see what things affect my score. I did one a few weeks ago (score 864) and just did one now (with the big change being Capital One card settled, £1000 limit). The score is the same, even though the level of debt on each card is pretty similar.

Clariman

The_Boss wrote:

Yep, £2000 limit on Morgan Stanley would be wiped out.

Thing is, I have been paying for my credit score for a while now on an experimental basis to see what things affect my score. I did one a few weeks ago (score 864) and just did one now (with the big change being Capital One card settled, £1000 limit). The score is the same, even though the level of debt on each card is pretty similar.

Hi The Boss

I don't wish to be rude, but I think you are throwing your money down the drain doing multiple credit score checks. Your credit score is just one credit reference agency's opinion of how lenders in general might rate you. In reality, each lender does their own credit scoring based on their own score card, their own policy rules and their own marketing criteria. IMHO the credit score information from the CRAs is solely a money making exercise. Sure, it can give you an indication but no more. Your credit history, however is well worth looking at because these are facts not opinions.

To understand more about how credit scoring, read martin's article here or the stoozing website's insiders guide here.

Clariman

The_Boss

Yeah, sure. I understand completely. I just wanted to see what effect things had when stuff changed (e.g. searches coming off, accounts settled). Now I've seen that settling seems to have little impact, I will not bother paying again as that and searches removed were the main focus of my experiment.

CTT_2

Well I did the same and paid for my credit score one from Equifax and Experien.
The one from Equifax gave me a score of 524 which is excellent. However with the other one my score was only 695 and was deemed poor. Probably because I have had about 7 credit searches in last 6 months but Equifax do not show all the searches hence the reason a better score. The only reason I have had so many searches is because I have been busy tarting.
My mother always said I would come to no good.

The_Boss

CTT wrote:

Well I did the same and paid for my credit score one from Equifax and Experien.
The one from Equifax gave me a score of 524 which is excellent. However with the other one my score was only 695 and was deemed poor. Probably because I have had about 7 credit searches in last 6 months but Equifax do not show all the searches hence the reason a better score. The only reason I have had so many searches is because I have been busy tarting.
My mother always said I would come to no good.

Funnily enough, that was exactly the same for me. Equifax rating was 'good' while Experian's was 'poor'. I've had two searches removed by Experian since then and one has dropped off, so its looking a bit healthier now.