Barclaycard Goldfish or initial?

Zack1

krissmiller wrote: »

hi there - i am looking for advice from anyome who may have heard of a card called millenium platinum, it claims to be for people with previous credit problems and guarantees acceptance with a £5000 limit but you have to pay £99.95 up front (I remember having to pay £50 to capital one) but i am not sure if this is a scam or not.

Be careful, there are other cards like that where you pay a monthly fee as well, or a service charge and other kinds of stupid fees and it's a con. You'd be better off trying to go for Vanquis etc. See the cards & post about this card in the Sub-prime thread, someone may have heard about it. http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=2096485

This is a similar card to one you say about, I got emailed about something like this. £80 joining fee and £5 a month, basically a con.
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/cards/2009/12/the-0-card-thats-not-0

As for £50 to Capital One, pretty sure that would've been a deposit/security, that you would later have got back/knocked off a bill. I've got reasonable history and they accepted me without that but with a low limit, o2 took £150 deposit from me though

ElkyElky

krissmiller wrote: »

hi there - i am looking for advice from anyome who may have heard of a card called millenium platinum, it claims to be for people with previous credit problems and guarantees acceptance with a £5000 limit but you have to pay £99.95 up front (I remember having to pay £50 to capital one) but i am not sure if this is a scam or not.

It is not a scam but they do mislead people. Firstly, it is not a credit card. You can only purchase items from their own website, no where else. Secondly, in addition to paying the up front fee, they'll also charge a monthly fee.

Stay clear of it.

fawinds

Zack1 wrote: »

I've just had a chat to Barclaycard people, you may want to bear this in mind. You say they improved in 3 months, is that at the monthly intervals? I asked Barclaycard live chat and they said "I would wait 3 months before retrying" I don't want to apply for a while anyway so probably will just wait the 3 months anyway (need searches from Oct & Nov to get knocked off my Experian & Equifax reports)

I believe I have made some 5 searches since August which pretty much averages 1 per month. Anyway I am not trying again until March or April, when I will be ready to make the real application. They may not like people abusing the pre-application search as it may cost them money.

The pre-application check creates a footprint on your callcredit file. But it is not seen by other lenders as a full credit search would be. When you make the real application they will search Equifax, so my advise is that you get a copy of your callcredit file and your equifax file, then compare and only apply if you see equifax has the same or better information about you than callcredit. In my case callcredit has four credit accounts but equifax has six, hence more green 0s. I'v got there four searches that will drop in the next two months. That will be the time for the Flybe and Initial applications.

fawinds

krissmiller wrote: »

hi there - i am looking for advice from anyome who may have heard of a card called first millenium platinum, it claims to be for people with previous credit problems and guarantees acceptance with a £5000 limit but you have to pay £99.95 up front (I remember having to pay £50 to capital one) but i am not sure if this is a scam or not.

Not technically a scam but a rip-off. It's no real credit card, but something like a catalogue account.

If you just need a credit account in order to enhance your credit file, get a JD Williams catalogue and they will give you plenty of green 0s and a high credit limit after a few months. You don't even need to buy anything at all.

Zack1

fawinds wrote: »

I believe I have made some 5 searches since August which pretty much averages 1 per month. Anyway I am not trying again until March or April, when I will be ready to make the real application. They may not like people abusing the pre-application search as it may cost them money.

The pre-application check creates a footprint on your callcredit file. But it is not seen by other lenders as a full credit search would be. When you make the real application they will search Equifax, so my advise is that you get a copy of your callcredit file and your equifax file, then compare and only apply if you see equifax has the same or better information about you than callcredit. In my case callcredit has four credit accounts but equifax has six, hence more green 0s. I'v got there four searches that will drop in the next two months. That will be the time for the Flybe and Initial applications.

Ah cool, yea that's probably why she said wait 3 months as she could understand I wanted to check, but didn't want me abusing it (either intentionally or unintentionally) by checking every week or something.

I get 2 a year from Equifax free because of my Capital One card. I've used one already so will use the other in June when I want to apply for more things so I can see a longer history and compare properly.

I haven't used Call Credit yet, I see they offer a free trial of 3 months though - do they send verification stuff in the post like Equifax did when I initially used them, or can you get access instantly? The reason I ask is that I do things as if I still live at my home address so I don't have to keep changing because of uni, but I'm at uni at the moment with mail redirection. I think things like that go with a "do not redirect" marker (my Equifax ID thing did, tax/benefit things do too apparently, to prevent fraud), but it's annoying because Royal Mail wouldn't redirect it so I wouldn't get it while I'm at uni (don't even think they'd deliver it to my home address, they just send it back to the company)

fawinds

Zack1 wrote: »

I haven't used Call Credit yet, I see they offer a free trial of 3 months though - do they send verification stuff in the post like Equifax did when I initially used them, or can you get access instantly? The reason I ask is that I do things as if I still live at my home address so I don't have to keep changing because of uni, but I'm at uni at the moment with mail redirection. I think things like that go with a "do not redirect" marker (my Equifax ID thing did, tax/benefit things do too apparently, to prevent fraud), but it's annoying because Royal Mail wouldn't redirect it so I wouldn't get it while I'm at uni (don't even think they'd deliver it to my home address, they just send it back to the company)

Beware of this. I believe they do not offer any three month trial. It is only FREE credit score, but not free access to credit report.

Currently I have cancelled my account with them, but 4 months ago I searched Google for promo codes and there was one for three months access for 4 quid, which I did.

They send you a letter with a pin code you have to enter before access to your credit report is enabled.

Zack1

fawinds wrote: »

Beware of this. I believe they do not offer any three month trial. It is only FREE credit score, but not free access to credit report.

Currently I have cancelled my account with them, but 4 months ago I searched Google for promo codes and there was one for three months access for 4 quid, which I did.

They send you a letter with a pin code you have to enter before access to your credit report is enabled.

Thanks, I'll check that again!

Ah same as the Equifax then, just hope it doesn't have a do not redirect on it...

fawinds

Zack1 wrote: »

Thanks, I'll check that again!

Ah same as the Equifax then, just hope it doesn't have a do not redirect on it...

To be honest I recall the experian envelope do, but not sure about callcredit.