Not Higher Enough Limit!!!!!

TurnaroundSue

Hi, I was wondering if anybody can help me please. We have just bought a car using some savings and some loan, which is at 4.99% apr and am trying to get around £10k on interest free cards to pay off the loan and reduce balance quicker without paying interest.

So we applied for a credit card and only got a limit of £1650. It is in my OH's name and his salary is £35k. We have a mortgage of only £22000 with our house valued at £220K. No other debt (apart from new loan for car) and pay off our credit card bill every month without fail.

My OH phoned up Barclaycard today, to see if they could give us a bigger limit, but have said that they will review it in 6 month's time, even though his limit was £10k with them before he closed the account around 5/6 years ago.

He has therefore told them to close the account as the limit is no good to us, but am just wondering whether to apply somewhere else and how will this affect our credit rating (which is excellent btw) if we keep applying for cards.

Any advice you are able to give will be gratefully received. Many thanks.

chattychappy

TurnaroundSue wrote: »

He has therefore told them to close the account as the limit is no good to us, but am just wondering whether to apply somewhere else and how will this affect our credit rating

Oh I do think it was unnecessary to close that account. £1650 is still £1650.

Generally 2 or 3 searches are no problem. MBNA seem to give the highest limits. I've had a high limit off Halifax too. (9K).

Incidentally I applied for Barclaycard and Natwest on the same day - got 10K on both, though my income was higher and this was a couple of years back.

Just think it's more difficult to get a high limit with a new card these days and you might have to split the transaction.

Anyway do think twice before you close a card with a high limit (as you did with Barclaycard 5/6 yrs ago). It's hard to get them back these days!

TurnaroundSue

chattychappy wrote: »

Oh I do think it was unnecessary to close that account. £1650 is still £1650.

Anyway do think twice before you close a card with a high limit (as you did with Barclaycard 5/6 yrs ago). It's hard to get them back these days!

Hi CC - Many thanks for your reply. Do you mean that OH shouldn't have asked them to close the account? I see where you are coming from about closing cards with high limits now, so will bear that in mind in future.

At present we have 2 Tesco cc (which get paid off each month in full) - one has a limit of £3500 and the other is £5k I think, but as we use these all the time, didn't feel that it was good to keep cc's open that weren't being used.

CLAPTON

1650 at 0% seems better than nothing at 0% and in any event the credit search has already been done

TurnaroundSue

CLAPTON wrote: »

1650 at 0% seems better than nothing at 0% and in any event the credit search has already been done

Hi Clapton, have just realised that and just come off the phone to BC to keep the account open, but they say that it cannot be re-activated and therefore we need to apply again! Important lesson learned:D

Will try another company now and see what they can do. I think it might have been an error on our part in getting such a low limit, as we actually requested the £10k limit and it came back that they wanted further information. We thought they would phone us for this info, but didn't, and a week later we had the card through the post with the aforesaid limit of £1650.

Do all applications ask whether you want to do a balance transfer, as we said yes to this question and therefore put in the amount we owed. If we answer no (thereby not actually telling them how much we need) can we still do a balance transfer after if we fail to mention it on the application form?

chattychappy

TurnaroundSue wrote: »

Do you mean that OH shouldn't have asked them to close the account?

Yes for this reason:

CLAPTON wrote: »

1650 at 0% seems better than nothing at 0% and in any event the credit search has already been done

TurnaroundSue wrote: »

Do all applications ask whether you want to do a balance transfer, as we said yes to this question and therefore put in the amount we owed. If we answer no (thereby not actually telling them how much we need) can we still do a balance transfer after if we fail to mention it on the application form?

Not all do. Usually if a BT is available at the time you apply, then you can also do it afterwards.

Some have said that it's better to say you want a BT because banks might take that into account when they do the assessment - ie by transferring a balance you are reducing your commitments elsewhere. So you are a better risk than if you just use the limit for new spending.

Personally I've never believed the banks were that sophisticated! (And besides. you could run up new spend on the card you just transferred from.)

Rupert_Bear

chattychappy wrote: »

Oh I do think it was unnecessary to close that account. £1650 is still £1650.

Generally 2 or 3 searches are no problem. MBNA seem to give the highest limits. I've had a high limit off Halifax too. (9K).

Incidentally I applied for Barclaycard and Natwest on the same day - got 10K on both, though my income was higher and this was a couple of years back.

Just think it's more difficult to get a high limit with a new card these days and you might have to split the transaction.

Anyway do think twice before you close a card with a high limit (as you did with Barclaycard 5/6 yrs ago). It's hard to get them back these days!

There is a lot of rubbish on this website about closing down unused cards. I have some with very high limits and I know if I were to close them down and wanted a high limit next time it would be very difficult.

Also very short sighted of OP telling them to close down their new card.

globalds

I don't know if this would work , as I have never tried it , but this is what I would do.

I would contact the card company and give a specific reason for asking for a larger limit.

This year we spent about £4,000 booking a holiday, flights, hotels, rental car.
That is what I would use for my request.That I was planning a holiday for the next year and wanted to book stuff using the card and a larger limit would make it possible.

I can't see them checking up on it later , but something that sounds feasible , rather than sounding like someone who may have just run out of cash would make sense to me.

TurnaroundSue

Rupert_Bear wrote: »

There is a lot of rubbish on this website about closing down unused cards. I have some with very high limits and I know if I were to close them down and wanted a high limit next time it would be very difficult.

Also very short sighted of OP telling them to close down their new card.

I now what you are saying RB, but I told my OH to do that BEFORE actually coming on this site first!!! But with the wisdom of hindsight I would not take that option now, naturally.

MFWannabe

Hi
You say that you want to put the loan onto a 0% card so that you don't pay any interest but don't forget that you will have to pay a balance transfer fee and there will probably be fees on the loan to close it early.
You have very low rate on the loan; maybe you may be better putting the extra money each month into a savings account and then maybe paying off the loan as soon as you can? Once you have enough to pay off the loan ask lender what the settlement figure will be

TurnaroundSue

FREEZ wrote: »

Hi
You say that you want to put the loan onto a 0% card so that you don't pay any interest but don't forget that you will have to pay a balance transfer fee and there will probably be fees on the loan to close it early.
You have very low rate on the loan; maybe you may be better putting the extra money each month into a savings account and then maybe paying off the loan as soon as you can? Once you have enough to pay off the loan ask lender what the settlement figure will be

There are no fees to pay it off early, so that is not an issue. Working on £10k with a balance transfer of say 3% then the fee would be £300, whereas the annual interest on the loan is £499, so it is still better to do the balance transfer than pay the loan.

I was thinking that I might just wait 6 months leaving the money on the loan and then apply for another card at that time. What do you think would be the best, or will it still be okay to apply for another card now, bearing in mind that it might need at least 2 cards to get the amount I want? (Just concerned that my/OH's credit rating might be affected). Any further advice would be greatly received.

Many thanks for all your comments/advice so far.:D