Barclaycard does not honour its own credit limit.

EwanOroot

jonesMUFCforever wrote: »

OP having such a low limit could seriously damage your credit rating!

You have a limit of £50 and used £49 or 98% of available credit.

Say you had a limit of £1000 and spent £50 you are only using 5% of available credit - this would look good when applying for extra or further cards.

This is a good point but I don't think I should be too worried about credit rating because of other things: my mortgage which is never paid late and three other credit cards which have about £50,000 in credit but I only spend about £1,500 each month and always pay in full.

zerog wrote: »

I didn't even know a £50 limit was possible! Most cards have a £500 min limit, some bad credit ones have a min limit £250 or £200...

Barclaycard's website lets you set this yourself but, for me anyway, it's been worse than no help.

Anyway, lesson learnt and off I go to get a prepaid card then close the Barclaycard.

jonesMUFCforever

Won't a prepaid card cost you to buy and top up?
I think you are cutting your nose off to spite your face here.Just ask Barclays to increase the limit to say £500.

EwanOroot

jonesMUFCforever wrote: »

Won't a prepaid card cost you to buy and top up?

A quick look at some of them (including the Orange one mentioned by aleph_0) shows that there's a small fee to buy it but no fee to top up. Some have monthly fees but I would not choose them.

jonesMUFCforever wrote: »

I think you are cutting your nose off to spite your face here.Just ask Barclays to increase the limit to say £500.

Whilst I could see that for other people with other situations, for me the best thing is not to just increase the limit. I want a limit that means exactly that, which is why I tried what I tried with Barclaycard.

[Deleted User]

jonesMUFCforever wrote: »

Won't a prepaid card cost you to buy and top up?

An Orange Pre-Paid Mastercard costs £5 to purchase and, depending on where you load it, nothing to load and use.

CLAPTON

EwanOroot wrote: »

A quick look at some of them (including the Orange one mentioned by aleph_0) shows that there's a small fee to buy it but no fee to top up. Some have monthly fees but I would not choose them.


Whilst I could see that for other people with other situations, for me the best thing is not to just increase the limit. I want a limit that means exactly that, which is why I tried what I tried with Barclaycard.

I don't understand the places you are buying from but is there any danger that serially defaulting might cause you to be black listed in some way?

EwanOroot

CLAPTON wrote: »

I don't understand the places you are buying from but is there any danger that serially defaulting might cause you to be black listed in some way?

An interesting thought!

The card is destined for online vendors such as Amazon & Apple and especially those linked to tablet-type devices with "App Stores". Normally if I'm just doing web-based shopping I check that there's enough credit before making a purchase and top-up if required.

The protection I need is really for the Kindle Fire and iPod Touch devices, which have to have a valid credit card registered for their "App Stores" even to download free apps or books. When these are passed around the youth of the family there's a risk that they purchase more than they're allowed; passwords and PINs are the first line of defence, obviously, but there are circumstances where they are trusted to download stuff on their own. In that case they might chance their arms and try to download more (a friend's child cost them £1,300 when he was being trusted)!

I would *hope* that the number of rejected transactions would be few and far between, so I wouldn't be classed as a serial defaulter.