Bank account and credit rating help!

xchescax

I am in my last year of study at University and last week I decided to open a student bank account to take advantage of the benefits. I already have a current account with Yorkshire Bank and went to Natwest and applied for a student account but was rejected. The only reason the lady could think of was my credit rating. I have never had a credit card or an overdraft so these cannot be the reasons. I think the cause may be a joint account I had at Barclays with my flatmate to pay bills at University. This account did not have an overdraft but went overdrawn by £7.99. Due to the correspondence letters being sent to my home address, this was not addressed until I payed the sum and shut the account 9 months later.

Am I now in the situation where I cannot open a student account or apply for a credit card? How can I rectify this situation? I really need some advise on how to dig myself out of this situation please!

YorkshireBoy

xchescax wrote: »

How can I rectify this situation? I really need some advise on how to dig myself out of this situation please!

Order your credit reports from Experian and Equifax to see the full extent of the damage.

Only then can you begin to address it.

jalexa

xchescax wrote: »

Due to the correspondence letters being sent to my home address,

The advice to check you credit reports is right, but I anticipate that the "£7.99" problem is not the main problem. You also need to look at how your residency history, including electoral roll registration, (or lack of it), is coming across to a potential lender. Lenders like to see "traceability" going back at least 3 years.

Not easy or quick to solve but your last year is a good time to start.

YorkshireBoy

jalexa wrote: »

I anticipate that the "£7.99" problem is not the main problem.

I'm not so sure. It depends how the bank were reporting the account to the CRAs.

If they were reporting a status 8 (default) after 9 months, then OP will have an uphill struggle...

http://www.experian.co.uk/downloads/consumer/YCREJul08.pdf (see pages 14-15)

Experian_company_representative

What was the final sum at the time your paid up and closed the account? Defaults should not be filed for anything less than £10, so if the balance was still £7.99 then perhaps the problem lies elsewhere. You might actually be falling foul of lenders' expectation these days to see lots of positive evidence of responsible credit management on your credit report, considering the large number of organisations that share credit data now. A copy of your credit report is, as others have said, the best place to start. You could also get back in touch with Natwest and ask for a fuller explanation: they shouldn't have to guess as they made the decision! Might be difficult though if this happened several months ago.

James Jones

KingElvis

If it was Natwest you probably fell foul of the AVU department....search the forum for Natwest AVU