Missed payment record removed on Experian report & available credit decreases???

owen22

Hi guys,

After registering for free on creditexpert.com I noted that an old credit card account I had with HSBC, which was settled in August 2008, was still showing as active and had a 'late payment' red mark against it.

I contacted HSBC and got it sorted out and they subsequently (after one 20 min phone call and one 30 min meeting in my branch :mad:) marked the account as 'settled' and removed the incorrect late payment. I have checked my report on the CE site this morning and the record has been ammended and everything is green. Great... :money:or so I thought...

When I checked the 'summary' screen on my credit report I noticed that since HSBC updated their records my 'available credit' has decreased from £8,000 to £77 and the 'percentage of credit being used' has shot up from around 23%to 94%!! :eek:

Why is this? I had, maybe wrongly, thought getting the HSBC info amended would help my credit score, not make it worse!! Or am I reading thing incorrectly? :huh:

Thanks,
Owen.

NB - I have not paid to view my credit score so I've no idea what my score was before HSBC ammended my records or what my score might be now.

Tixy

When this account was active you would have had the credit limit on the card available to you (which presumably was about an £8k credit limit). Now the account is closed you no longer have this credit available to you, so it shows you are using a much greater percentage of your available credit.

Good idea not to pay for the score.

How many open accounts now show? what is your total debt? It has not necessarily made things worse for you, it would depend on each lenders own criteria which they would views as preferable.

owen22

Tixy wrote: »

When this account was active you would have had the credit limit on the card available to you (which presumably was about an £8k credit limit). Now the account is closed you no longer have this credit available to you, so it shows you are using a much greater percentage of your available credit.

Ahh, that makes sense! (although the limit on the card was only £4,000...)

Tixy wrote: »

Good idea not to pay for the score.

Exactly... it's just a number after all! If all the information on my file is correct there's not much else I can do!

Tixy wrote: »

How many open accounts now show?

6

Tixy wrote: »

what is your total debt?

£7,995

Thanks!

Tixy

When doing a new credit application there is definitely a fine line between too much credit available and too little.

For example if you have a lot of unused credit then in theory if you get a new credit card you could max out that and your exisiting available credit - and they would wonder if you could afford debt repayments on it all.

But if you have too little credit available (or show as using a high percentage of your credit) then it can look like you are in financial difficulties.

So what the right balance is is anyone's guess (as it can vary for each lender) and it would depend on why you wanted credit and what sort of credit you were after).

owen22

Thanks for the advice!