Credit score fell unexplainably

cidr

Hi folks,

This will be my first post so if i've missed anything, please let me know:)

for a while I've been working on building my credit rating after owing Capital one less than £1000 for quite a while. I paid off all my debts, got myself on the Electoral role and everything was sqeaky clean. I applied for a new Capital one credit card and was approved.

My credit scrore went from around 620 to 720 and it became 'fair'. However, recently I applied for one of those payday loans (£250). I checked my credit score a couple of days later and was suprised when my score shot down to 644.

I've looked about the net and most articles say that if you are approved for one of these loans, it doesn't affect your score and if you pay it back, it will affect it positively. So I don't understand how the score has went down since the payday for the loan isn't until the end of this month.

There's nothing affecting my score negatively, at least that's what my report says. There seems to be only positive.

Is there anyway to find out what might be causing this? I'm unsure where to look.

Thanks in advance for any help

Beast

The general feedback on this site is that your credit 'score' as calculated by the likes of Experian etc means absolutely nothing, its a fairly random number generated by them to make you feel like you've got something for your money.

Every lender will have their own lending criteria which doesn't link to your Experian score.

Rafter

cidr,

Could be all sorts of factors, changes to methodology of the ratings or something to do with your payday loan.

Personally, I would be very worried about lending to someone who had taken a payday loan recently. If you are prepared to pay a fortune in interest to borrow very short term, that implies your ability to pay off other credit is limited - and therefore you would be marked down.

Just the fact you have a credit search on your file could impact it - but this seems unlikely from one search.

R.

ILW

I believe Experian drop your score by 50 for every search, but as said before it is meaningless as the lenders use their own scoring criteria. The score is just a way of getting £6.00 out of you.

simpywimpy

How disappointing. My credit score was 996 so I was over the moon and subsequently applied for the santander card lol.

Its the last time I pay to check it though if it's a flaming rip off

ILW

simpywimpy wrote: »

How disappointing. My credit score was 996 so I was over the moon and subsequently applied for the santander card lol.

Its the last time I pay to check it though if it's a flaming rip off

It is pretty obvious that the score has little practical use, it does not even take into account whether you are employed or not, or what your income is.

inmymind_2

Is the lower your bills section on experian a better way to check if you'd possibly be accepted for credit? rather than paying for your credit score.

cidr

Thanks for all the responses.

It's interesting that applying for one of these loans could make you high risk for borrowing or other credit!

I think it was just a January blues thing!