Credit Scores & All That...

RichL74

Thought I would share my 'experian experience' with you for all those that claim their scores are 900 and perfect yet they still get turned down.

There is nothing on my credit report other than my mobile phone contract. There are two older contracts that are settled from when I used to be with first Vodafone and then T-Mobile.

I applied for, and was successful in getting a Nationwide credit card at 9.9% APR

I also applied for an Argos card as was accepted for that too, decent credit limit too.

I also signed up for a Next shopping account too - again successful.

So yesterday I signed up for the free month of Experian to see what was now being reported on me and had to laugh a little bit at my score which is 393 - very poor - yet I was accepted for Nationwide, Argos and Next who use Experian as their main CRA (Next maybe Equifax, though still reported on Experian)

It said the reason it was so poor was because I am not on the electoral register - yet I still got both of the cards and the shopping account - make of that what you will.

So I guess the point of this story is that next time you get rejected for your card, yet you claim to have an excellent 900+ rating from Experian, dont even bother wasting your energy typing those words, because as you can see from above, your score just doesn't matter to the lenders one bit and they will use their own lending criterias and not go by some score from a CRA. Sorry if that seems like I am preaching to the converted who already realise and know this, sadly there are others who are taken in by their scores and think they are perfect fodder for a card or two.

Thanks for reading.

RichL74

Argos store card sorry, not Argos credit card I was needed in new bed and was all up for paying up front but thought I would apply for the store card just to see if my luck was still going strong.

droiderm

Just out of curiousity, did you use the same addresses on your applications and your credit score information?

I don't give much importance to "credit scores", but I actually have the opposite issue. Good score, and will only be accepted for subprime.

I would be interested to know what experian says are your negative factors? I assume applying for all the credit in a short space of time isn't a good thing.

sfax

I got an Equifax score of 509 at the start of September and was marked down to "fair" for a "1" in my payment history but this was in 2008, and also Good not Excellent for the number of active credit agreements (11). Despite this distinctly average looking score, I have been accepted for a new Tesco 0% BT card, a new BOS 0% BT card, a new Nationwide 0% BT card and a new Amex gold card all in the last 3 months.

The score is a very blunt tool and the longer you spend reading people's experience of scores on this forum, the more you realise it has very little value for many people

RichL74

Yes, I used the same address details for all.

Experian negative factors, 1 credit account opened in the last 30 days, not on the electoral register and some of my accounts are old (as in O2 is over 2 years old so nothing new to judge me on - their words not mine)

Still it doesnt matter to me really what it says now.

[Deleted User]

RichL74 wrote: »

I was needed in new bed

Wow. Maybe I should pop down to Argos...

Curr946

its more likely that your score is low due to all the credit searches...

RichL74

Deleted_User wrote: »

Wow. Maybe I should pop down to Argos...

Haha! Damn, wish I had noticed that!!

RichL74

Curr946 wrote: »

its more likely that your score is low due to all the credit searches...

Not really, 3 searches would do that would it and put me into the very poor category?

20 searches I could understand, not 3 and even then I'm sure I wouldnt have gone from excellent to very poor for 3 searches either.

droiderm

Have you been spending on this new credit?

BugsyBrowne

Trouble is that James jones of Experian knows their scoring system has flaws and this could easily be rectified by taking in people's salary under your account options and also people who do have defaults or CC'js or discharged bankrupt shouldn't be getting high scores just because they haven't missed a payment for a year.

People with adverse should be sitting on scores under 200 and Experian should score based on any adverse instead of just repayment history.

I think they could really market this product properly if they really wanted to.