What do Credit reports really mean?

empty_wallet_2

I've been putting it off for too long but finally did my Credit reports yesterday as Its now been 6 years and 2 months since I went BR and at some point this year I want to look at applying for a mortgage.


But what do these reports really mean??


So I started with Experian and they gave me a score of 956/999 "Good" but showed that 1 negative against me was the low credit limit that Capital One gave me on a credit card 2 years ago of only £200 and they won't budge on it (yet gave my wife £1250 and she went BR too?) and it would suggest I was a high risk, also an incorrect account from Lloyds (wrong default date) which i'm chasing up, so I thought as Experian are showing me as "Good" and a high score I would see what credit cards they say they can recommend to me as having a high chance of getting if I apply with a better credit limit than current to try and remove the negative low credit limit from Capital One, low and behold all they recommend is 4 cards, 3 of which are prepaid cards which anyone can get and the 4th was from Aquaris with a real high interest rate, so in reality my so called "Good" credit score is not worth the paper I printed it on from Experian, I also looked at what loans they could offer me to see if it was the same, I picked £5k for a car and this time it showed me 5 hp offers over 5 years that would have seen me payback almost £10K.


Next I did Callcredit (Noodle), again the same problem with Lloyds and they only gave me 2/5 rating which I guess is poor, I didn't pay for their upgrade package to see a credit score but they like Experian recommend credit cards/loans etc that they think I will easily be accepted for due to my current credit rating, so I hit the button to see what was on offer and it was much better than Experian with about 41/133 companies coming back with probably 50% of those as marked as high probability of being accepted and these were from companies like Barclaycard, Virgin with sub 20% interest rates, good balance transfer rates and even 0% purchase deals for 6-13 months. I would say another 25% marked as good probability and the final 25% saying medium and then the rest of the 133 companies as low possibility. So why can Callcredit recommend all these companies on what looks like a poor credit rating to me and Experian offer nothing really on a good score?


I just did the £2 standard report from Equifax to see if any gremlins lurking as no point getting a full report if they also had the Lloyds problem which they do.


I was tempted to apply for a card via callcredit to use for petrol (only to improve my credit rating) as the £200 limit on the Capital One card isn't enough for monthly fuel which I currently just budget for and transfer to the joint account each month but then I thought if I do and then get declined then that's a mark against me on the current credit searches so thought better of it and think I had better just address the Lloyds problem with all 3 credit reference companies.