Will I be accepted or am I pushing my luck?

jakesuk

This is one for the seasoned stoozers I suppose or people who have dabbled with cards for a while.

I'm wondering if I could ask for a general consensus on whether I would be accepted for the Tesco Bank 0% 12mths BT card with 0% fee. My situation is as follows:

No. of credit cards currently: 8 (3 x 0% purchase cards total debt £14K, 5 reward cards total debt approx £1K but paid off in full each month). Total available credit £45K (of which £15K used today)

Annual income: £45K

Have a few other credit accounts ie. phone, utility, a few bank accounts (overdrafts never used)

On electoral roll, never missed a payment, few years solid history.

I have had 2 searches in the last 2 months but none in the 4 month period prior to that.

Clearly my available credit is high compared to my income which could be my biggest problem.

Purpose of getting the Tesco card is to transfer the balance from one of the 0% purchase cards which is due to expire in 6 weeks.

samtoby

Why do you need all that available credit?

izools

You won't get consensus I can guarantee that much! Even the underwriters themselves wouldn't be able to predict an answer without running your application through their magic number generator...

Tesco are one of the stricter lenders and may be weary of how many cards you have and how much you have available even given your income.

One other very important factor is the average age of your accounts.

How old is your newest account?
How old is your oldest currently open account?

If you haven't opened any accounts in the last 12 months it will help a great deal, if you've opened any in the last 6 months especially it will definitely hurt your chances.

I would start by asking all of your current card issuers if they have any repeat offers, so that you can transfer the balance to a 0% deal with another one of your credit cards without opening a new one.

jakesuk

samtoby wrote: »

Why do you need all that available credit?

Several reasons:

1) I need unused credit so I don't look out of control
2) It's spread over 8 cards so total is inevitably going to be reasonably high
3) One of the 0% purchase cards has £6K of unused credit which will not remain unused for much longer.
4) I'm reluctant to reduce limits on some cards in case it looks as though the lender is reducing my limit which may have a detrimental impact on my credit report.

jakesuk

izools wrote: »

One other very important factor is the average age of your accounts.

How old is your newest account?
How old is your oldest currently open account?

If you haven't opened any accounts in the last 12 months it will help a great deal, if you've opened any in the last 6 months especially it will definitely hurt your chances.

Newest accounts: 2 which are less than 2 months old as a result of the 2 searches I mentioned in my earlier post. One of those is a bank account, the other is a credit card.

Credit cards: Oldest credit card is Nov 2008. Others opened in Apr 2011, Jul 2011, Apr 2012, Jun 2012, Oct 2012, Dec 2012 and Jun 2013.

izools

With those two new accounts your chances are far far reduced.

Do they actually both appear on your credit file yet?

If so, don't even try until the six month anniversary of your newest card.

I might be wrong, but in my personal experience this has paid dividends.

jakesuk

izools wrote: »

With those two new accounts your chances are close to zero.

Do they actually both appear on your credit file yet?

If so, don't even try until the six month anniversary of your newest card.

I might be wrong, but in my personal experience this has paid dividends.

Thanks for replies izools. I doubt the credit card yet shows as it was only applied for a couple of weeks ago. The bank account may do as that was last month.

I get my £2 file from Experian and Equifax every few months and I haven't checked in last month or so, so I can't be sure.

I'm tempted to go for it and then make no further applications for 4-6 months. I also like to hear though what people think.

izools

Given how recent your other applications were I would say get in there quickly before they update your credit file.

I find my Experian file updates around the 5-8th of every month, and the data that's updated at that point is around six weeks behind.

New accounts take 6-8 weeks to show up in my experience.

End of the day, if they do say no, you'd only have to wait six months before trying again with them anyway.

But how about calling round your existing lenders first?

jakesuk

There's probably no point calling the existing lenders as I am not set to gain anything. If I don't get the 0% BT card, I'll just pay off the balance on the 0% purchase card before it expires.

None of my current lenders are going to offer me a 0% BT card with 0% fee?

If they offered me a reduced fee of say 1%, there's probably still not enough profit in it for me to take them up on the offer given the paltry interest rates available out there.

izools

Oh, you said you were wanting to "Transfer the balance" from one of your 0% purchase cards... I took it to mean, well, just that lol

/confused

jakesuk

You're quite right I did say I wanted to transfer a balance to a 0% card. I also said that would be the Tesco card with a 0% fee. I'm not really interested in transferring to a card with a BT fee because there's no real value in doing so.

Still can't decide whether to make this application or not!