Why cant I get credit with a 999 Excellent score?

pilky

Last year I had £30'000 personal credit card debt - I paid off £16,000 and closed down the credit card I paid off (martin's advice on closing down unused accounts). I now have 1 MBNA credit card £7,000 and I am paying £100 per month interest alone on. I have a £7000 bank overdraft, again paying £100 per month interest on. I have just purchased my experian credit report which is immaculate - no late payments ever - my score states 999 Excellent - however I cant get credit - no one will touch me. I also used the matching service provided by Experian and they are pairing me up with companies of 30% interest rate. I havent moved house for 13 years so i just dont understand the problem - it is killing me paying £200 per month alone in interest when I could be paying that off the debt.

Any advice please - thank you in anticipation:)

Eonel

As many will come on here and say, don't put your trust into an Experian score - it is not a number any bank will ever use & generally a waste of money to purchase.

The one piece of information you have not supplied is your salary. In todays market, 14k used credit is a reasonable amount, and you are going to need to have a very good basic salary to support extending that by a further 7k to support a balance transfer ( albeit temporarily )

Also, have you been reducing your credit card limits as you have been paying down the balance? If your credit report shows you are using 80% of your available credit then that can also be problematic.

pilky

Hi Eonel, thanks for the info. Yes I am above the 80% available credit mark - I kept closing down the accounts when I paid them off - I took this advice from Martin as he said that unused accounts can go against credit - maybe I shouldnt have done that.

Is there any room for negotiation with RBS on my monthly overdraft charges I wonder ?

Eonel

Closing cards/reducing limits is a balancing act, but in general I would agree with Martin.

You do not want to have too much unused & available credit. And at the same time you do not want to be maxed on using your existing credit.

CLAPTON

what's your salary?

izools

Having total lines of credit adding up to over 50-66% of your salary can be a risk signal to creditors.
Having total debt adding up to over 66%-75% of your total limits can also be a risk signal to creditors.
Similarly, owing more than 50% of your salary is also a risk signal to creditors (not an exact science but around that mark).

I suspect you may display all risk signals ergo your being declined for credit.

Just another reason these "Scores" aren't worth the CPU time they take to calculate.

chattychappy

pilky wrote: »

I took this advice from Martin as he said that unused accounts can go against credit - maybe I shouldnt have done that.

I would never do that if the result is I'm using more than 50% of my available credit. (The 50% figure is just a guess, of course.)