Bank of Scotland Taking my credit card away. Advice needed.

nc1873

I'll try and keep it brief.

I own a credit card from BOS which has a limit of £7000 and have owned it for 7 years. I don't use it that often and my balance is always cleared each month.

I received a letter today saying after a regualr account review they are lowering my limit to £500 and closing my account in 30 days. This WILL NOT be re-opened.

Now i have no debt whatsoever and live with parents.

I phoned them and was told basically there was nothing they could do for me and i should check my credit score. The decision was final.

So i did through Experian and my Credit Report is perfect. I had 9 accounts of which 3 are open and the rest satisfactory with NO defaults on any of them. I had 5 searches of which 3 where insurance and 1 was the experian search.

I even payed the exta £5.95 to get my experian credit score and that was at 999 the highest possible score.

I phoned them back with this information and all he could tell me was i had to send my credit report in by post and they will review it?

The only thing that happened to me recently was my Mint Credit card which i had to buy my car a year ago and had not been used since may be getting closed. I got a letter from them that if i did not use my MINT card before the 14th of December my account would be closed. I was happy with this because i didn't use it.

But i do use my BOS credit card.

Anyone care to help and tell me whats happened:mad:

binaryuniverse

Sadly there is very little you can do. It is their right to decide whether to offer you credit and it would seem, in your case, that as you are not making the bank much money they are cancelling your account.

It isn't right. It isn't fair. Frankly I think the goverment should be doing something about it. But until that time they can do this.

nc1873

binaryuniverse wrote: »

Sadly there is very little you can do. It is their right to decide whether to offer you credit and it would seem, in your case, that as you are not making the bank much money they are cancelling your account.

It isn't right. It isn't fair. Frankly I think the goverment should be doing something about it. But until that time they can do this.

I said this to him on the phone and he said this was not a criteria

He said when this happens its usually because something has happened on your most recent credit report.

When i told him i had just purchased it online and there was nothing to say i was defaulting somewhere etc etc he was like eh well there's nothing i can do.

Just post that into us and we'll review it he tells me.

This was after he told me that they look at the exact same report i had in front of me?

loopy.magic

2 things I would say are do you need a credit card? If so does it actually have to be a BOS card? Your credit score indicates that you could very likely get another mainstream card from another bank.

As binary said it's probably just the fact that they're not making enough money from you.

I think accounts being closed is now getting to be a more common event, not much we poor consumers can do about it other then apply for other cards.

never-in-doubt

They cannot close the account just cos they are not making money from you, so forget that. If you have 9 other accounts they must feel that you're too exposed to credit and want to cut their losses and run. Perfectly legal, nothing the government will/can do as they are within their rights.

Moreso, take into account the recent development regards to this - they do not have the right to demand full repayment, they can only freeze the rate of interest and allow you to repay the min payment monthly with no more spending - i.e. its their get-out-clause.

Basically forget HBOS and move on to a proper lender that wants your business. As for the extra you paid for that silly generated number - save your money, the 999 score means nothing and that is what the gvt should be banning cos its daylight robbery - its a number generator that means nothing - the CRA's don't lend to you do they? So how can they score you exactly...?

See my point....?

Personally, i'd look to move on and forget HBOS. You can appeal to underwriting at Specialist Review Team (Cardiff/Leeds) but why waste your time?

speedbird1973

never-in-doubt wrote: »

Basically forget HBOS and move on to a proper lender that wants your business. As for the extra you paid for that silly generated number - save your money, the 999 score means nothing and that is what the gvt should be banning cos its daylight robbery - its a number generator that means nothing - the CRA's don't lend to you do they? So how can they score you exactly...?

See my point....?

SOMEONE was going to chirp up with this!! I'm suprised it took so many posts! why should the government ban it!??? It does gives the score that the CRA would give you, it's fair enough, even it it isn't representative of the model other people use!

If you have a good mix of active accounts/settled accounts then just apply elsewhere. Don't take it personally, they're within their rights to do this.

nc1873

I thought the £5.95 was a rip off.

To clarify i had 9 accounts of which 3 were open.

My 2 credit cards and my current phone contract.

The other 6 were old accounts like a differnt phone provider and 2 bank loans that were payed and settled with no defualts. Some going back as far as 2004.

The only creidt i had was £7000 with this card and £3500 on my other one. That was getting closed anyway and i was happy with that but now my other account is getting closed im a bit worried.

But my credit score is flawless on experian?

never-in-doubt

speedbird1973 wrote: »

SOMEONE was going to chirp up with this!! I'm suprised it took so many posts! why should the government ban it!??? It does gives the score that the CRA would give you, it's fair enough, even it it isn't representative of the model other people use!

If you have a good mix of active accounts/settled accounts then just apply elsewhere. Don't take it personally, they're within their rights to do this.

It does not give any representation of a true score and unless you can substantiate your claim i'd drop it..... It is a random number generator - simple as.

Do you want me to explain how scoring models work and how many different scenarios would be required to accurately reflect a true score? It'd be near-on impossible and the CRA's would need around 15,000 different scoring tecniqhes based around different lenders 'secret' scoring models......

stclair

nc1873 wrote: »

I'll try and keep it brief.

I own a credit card from BOS which has a limit of £7000 and have owned it for 7 years. I don't use it that often and my balance is always cleared each month.

I received a letter today saying after a regualr account review they are lowering my limit to £500 and closing my account in 30 days. This WILL NOT be re-opened.

Now i have no debt whatsoever and live with parents.

I phoned them and was told basically there was nothing they could do for me and i should check my credit score. The decision was final.

So i did through Experian and my Credit Report is perfect. I had 9 accounts of which 3 are open and the rest satisfactory with NO defaults on any of them. I had 5 searches of which 3 where insurance and 1 was the experian search.

I even payed the exta £5.95 to get my experian credit score and that was at 999 the highest possible score.

I phoned them back with this information and all he could tell me was i had to send my credit report in by post and they will review it?

The only thing that happened to me recently was my Mint Credit card which i had to buy my car a year ago and had not been used since may be getting closed. I got a letter from them that if i did not use my MINT card before the 14th of December my account would be closed. I was happy with this because i didn't use it.

But i do use my BOS credit card.

Anyone care to help and tell me whats happened:mad:

That score dont mean diddly swot...

To be honest I think it very pointless having this magical score lol

Rafter

kind of with n-i-d on this one. Remember experian etc. don't know how much you own, what you do for a living or how long you have been in current job.

A 999 score means you pay your bills regularly, aren't using much of the credit offered to you and are on the electoral roll at your current address.

That is only a fraction of what information the bank will use to make a lending decision.

Suggest you try the amazon mastercard - just got one with a juicy limit and you get discounts off at Amazon too!

R.

speedbird1973

I do understand scoring models, basically each bit of data is given a value and a weight, a number pitches up at the end and that's the score. It's not difficult, it's just secret!

Now if experian choose to sell you a score based on their proprietary model then good luck to them! If you have defaults and CCJs you get a lower score than if you keep up to date with everything. It IS representative. It's no more a number generator than any of the other banks scoring models.

I've profiled many lender's internal score (anonymised to postcode and score before you scream Data Protection). The average score over a postcode really doesn't vary all that much, neither does it over a socio economic type from the lenders I've dealt with. The models aren't that different, it really is a case of fine tuning from one comparable product to the next. (again the finer points my guess is no better than yours!)

However, that's not the debate on this thread! The bottom line is the CRAs are interpreting your data using their own model. If you choose to pay for that fine.. it's not something the government should be banning them for!

Rafter, They don't know your income, but by using some of their propietary data products from other areas of their business (the ones my company competes with) they can hazard a very good guess at your household income dependent on the postcode you live in. It's not an exact science, but the technique works well enough for purpose.