Santander Credit Card Application Debacle

Ribby1986

Hi All

Firstly, apologies if this has been covered before in another thread, I'm new to this and a bit blinded by posts! Also it's a bit of an essay I'm afraid.

I've had a really bad experience with a credit card application and wondered if anyone else had and have managed to do anything about it etc...

I have £3,500 debt on a 0% card that is due to expire in Feb 2011. Santander sent me a letter offering their credit card with a 0% balance transfer, 0% transfer fee and "guarenteed acceptance" (they've been bombarding me for months with these). So I filled in the form and took it into the branch to discuss it. They said they'd process it in-branch and that I could leave it with them and after a quick scout over the form I was told it looked fine and there should be no problems.

Later that day someone from the branch contacted me to tell me that my application had been approved, however the credit limit only came back at £1,100. I asked if they would still do a partial balance transfer and was told they would and on this basis I agreed to proceed figuring that an £1,100 transfer was better than none at all.

About 8 days later I received my new account pack to find to my horror that they had actually only approved a limit of £500 and no mention of the balance transfer I'd applied for. I immediately phoned the helpline to be told that they probably weren't going to do a balance transfer as there was no mention of it on my account, this was the sole reason for applying for the card in the first place. I immediately made a complaint centering around the incorrect and misleading information given to me by the branch and demanding to know what they intended to do about this as I felt I had not been treated fairly.

After another ten days later (and after the end of the cooling off period) I received a letter from their customer services team that simply said the credit limit assigned to me was decided by their underwriters and nothing to do with them, and not in anyway addressing my actual complaint.

The problem I have now is that I daren't apply for another balance transfer as I now have three credit checks against my file for the past 6 months (one for a store card opened last summer, one for Santander and one for the Experian account I set up to check my credit history after hearing back from Santander) which will now have affected my credit score.

Does anyone know if there's anything I can do about this?

Many thanks

ironlady2022

I think there has been some miscommunication here. Banks will not shift their own debt as that would cost them more money and they have your business already. The Advisor was wrong to say you would get a 1k limit and then reduce it down to 500 pounds. But when they mention you can do a balance transfer, they are referring to external debt from another bank, if you made this clear, then you have been misold it. MBNA have lots of credit cards under different names and you cannot balance transfer between them eg Virgin and AA credit cards are both owned by MBNA

YorkshireBoy

mayling03 wrote: »

Banks will not shift their own debt

The OP hasn't said the debt currently resides with Santander though!

YorkshireBoy

Ribby1986 wrote: »

...I now have three credit checks against my file

Correction, you only have two.

The Experian 'search' is an unrecorded type and, as such, is not visible to other lenders when they search your file.

Ribby1986

Thanks for your comments. Sorry, I should have clarified that the debt is currently on a Virgin credit card.

I've been looking at the Barclaycard offer, but my old Barclaycard still appears on my credit report despite having been closed for nearly two years. As such it's hard to know whether to risk applying for another one or not.