Income not enough - but still "80-90% chance of acceptance"?

Naga_Chilli

Hello all

My finances are in need of a bit of a tidy up, nothing tooooo horrendous but it's not great. In a nut shell, no overdraft, one joint loan with my wife (approx 5,000 remaining) which is always repaid no problem but the stinker is a Tesco credit card with around £5,200 outstanding (£7,000 limit). It's costing a fair amount a month and paying more than the minimum each month is tricky to say the least (current monthly minimum is around £130).

I plan on doing a full SOA as soon as I have the time to over the weekend, but in the mean time I'm looking into a good balance transfer card to sort the Tesco card out.

Barclay's platinum balance transfer card consistently strikes me as the best option and almost always comes back as the number one suggestion on any searches I do, which include searches done via credit reference agency accounts which I have (opened purely for the task of looking at options).

Barclay's website also comes back with an 80-90% chance of acceptance based on a pre-application check facility they have, which includes a basic search of my credit file (the kind that doesn't leave a footprint fortunately lol).

What's confusing me is one simple thing. The criteria for the Barclaycard says I need to be earning £20,000 a year before tax, or more. But I earn £18,000 :-\ Most search facilities require me to put in my income of course so I'm not sure why it keeps coming back as an option. I am a Barclays current account holder and in general my credit reports are fairly good, no late payments at all etc, the only negative thing is my utilisation of available credit and the fact I haven't significantly reduced my debt for a while.

Barclays couldn't give much help on the phone, they said that the 80-90% chance of acceptance is quite genuine but I may not get the full 35 months of interest free balance transfer time and that it would be difficult to give too much more information without me making a full application.

Confused to say the least, is any one able to shed a bit of light on the situation or advise anything else?

Sorry for the essay and thanks in advance :-)

KaiserBill

I have just obtained a Barclaycard Platinum card. My income, as stated on the application form, is £15,000 .


I did a soft search before I did the full application. The results given were, for the Initial card " excellent chance " and for the Platinum card " very good "


I went ahead and tried for the Platinum and was accepted.


This has come up on here a few times now. It would seem that Barclaycard are actually flexible on the minimum earnings criteria.


It was because I had discovered this knowledge on here that I went ahead and applied for the Platinum card - despite earning less than their stated minimum earnings requirement.


As you know, the only way to really find out is to make the full application, if you do, good luck.

Nasqueron

Salary 18500, got a £5500 Barclays BT card

I think it helped I lowered my bank cc to £3000 from £8850 and supermarket card from £3300 to £2000 to reduce my available credit but maybe it was just a coincidence - helped as well I didn't actually have any debt just wanted to use it for a cheap 0% purchase

Zenboor

Naga_Chilli wrote: »

Hello all

My finances are in need of a bit of a tidy up, nothing tooooo horrendous but it's not great. In a nut shell, no overdraft, one joint loan with my wife (approx 5,000 remaining) which is always repaid no problem but the stinker is a Tesco credit card with around £5,200 outstanding (£7,000 limit). It's costing a fair amount a month and paying more than the minimum each month is tricky to say the least (current monthly minimum is around £130).

I plan on doing a full SOA as soon as I have the time to over the weekend, but in the mean time I'm looking into a good balance transfer card to sort the Tesco card out.

Barclay's platinum balance transfer card consistently strikes me as the best option and almost always comes back as the number one suggestion on any searches I do, which include searches done via credit reference agency accounts which I have (opened purely for the task of looking at options).

Barclay's website also comes back with an 80-90% chance of acceptance based on a pre-application check facility they have, which includes a basic search of my credit file (the kind that doesn't leave a footprint fortunately lol).

What's confusing me is one simple thing. The criteria for the Barclaycard says I need to be earning £20,000 a year before tax, or more. But I earn £18,000 :-\ Most search facilities require me to put in my income of course so I'm not sure why it keeps coming back as an option. I am a Barclays current account holder and in general my credit reports are fairly good, no late payments at all etc, the only negative thing is my utilisation of available credit and the fact I haven't significantly reduced my debt for a while.

Barclays couldn't give much help on the phone, they said that the 80-90% chance of acceptance is quite genuine but I may not get the full 35 months of interest free balance transfer time and that it would be difficult to give too much more information without me making a full application.

Confused to say the least, is any one able to shed a bit of light on the situation or advise anything else?

Sorry for the essay and thanks in advance :-)

I would take the soft search / chance of approval rating with a shovel of salt.

Two weeks ago I applied for a £10000 Nationwide loan. The soft search came back with a rate of 6.2% over 5 years which I thought is decent. Full application made and got an immediate rejection.

Last week I applied for a Barclay's platinum having seen my approval result as excellent. Applied and got a rejection letter too.

Then I applied for another credit card where I was rated as no chance and got it with the a £4k limit.

IMHO, the soft searches are misleading and just another marketing tool to advertise credit.

Nasqueron

The soft searches don't impact on your credit report like applying for cards will do - they can only give an estimate (hence why they say 90% maximum - 10% chance you will be rejected) and it's based on overall trends and chance, there will always be one who gets a card the soft search thinks they won't get and vice versa