Previously defaulted creditors

DevilPigeon

Hi

I was in an IVA several years ago, it's been successfully completed and all relevant entries across all 3 credit files have now been removed (court info, notice of corrections, defaults etc). My files all show as being 'fair' but they're all clean (no late payments etc), but I'm not worried about the scores in and of themselves.

I have a vanquis card at present, £3k limit which I'm reducing down to a better level of outstanding debt (should be at 30% utilisation very shortly), with the aim of paying it off totally. I have no other credit outstanding.

I want to get a new credit card with a decent limit (approx £5k should be good) in order to balance transfer the vanquis plus fund a new second-hand car. i've soft searched nationwide who gave a £3.5k limit at 15.9% so i'm fairly confident i'd get that (having ready previous posts), however i'd like to get a more attractive deal which the more mainstream lenders give.

My question is, what are the chances of getting a card from the likes of Barclaycard, Lloyds, Halifax, A&L (Santander) etc considering that each of these were previous creditors within my IVA that defaulted me? Obviously they're not showing on my current files, but I'd hazard a guess they keep their own records of old customers and evaluate this in conjunction with CRA data.

Has anyone had experience of getting new credit lines opened from a previously defaulted lender???

If it's of use, I'm on gross ~£32k, total credit limits~£3.5k, total outstanding debt ~£1.2k

Thanks

CG19a

Don't have an answer for your question, but a suggestion is, why not take the nationwide card as it is, and balance transfer your balance over from Vanquis, you would probably save yourself quite a bit just doing that.

smithers1981

Yes definitely grab the Nationwide, priority should be to get the £1200 on 0% ASAP, and 20 months 0% isn't far off market best.

Once you have successfully done this you can re-evaluate and look for best solution to funding new car.

DevilPigeon

As far as the Nationwide option is concerned, I may wait a couple of weeks for Vanquis to update my files (last update was showing outstanding/total as £2700/£3000 - approx 90% utilisation, however due to being able to throw some cash at it in recent weeks am now at £1200/£3000 - approx 40% utilisation)... My thought is that a much lower utilisation on my files may mean Nationwide give me a better quote...

DevilPigeon

I'm still interested to find out how different creditors view previous "bad" customers... For example I've read that Amex have a very long memory, Barclaycard may be the same, Capital One seem to be more forgiving... I'm curious of anyone's experience...

giblet10

OK, I speak from experience with the following (now clean files, similar to OP, the following were in my IVA in 2006):

- Barclaycard said no, citing my previous account that was in my IVA
- Capital One said no, but others have said they were forgiven, so might be my application just didn't hit their criteria on the day
- Lloyds said yes, so now have their Avios Duo (their Create Card was in IVA)

I'm primarily interested in getting:

- AMEX - but understand they blacklist for life, unless you pay back everything you owe(d) and presumably the app isn't guaranteed even then
- MBNA Virgin Amex - but MBNA was in IVA and really can't find any people who have been forgiven

So, if anyone has info on how forgiving MBNA are, would be appreciated!