Credit Score & Aqua Card - declined

darkidoe

I would try appealing the rejection explaining your circumstances, and showing proof of settling the defaults. Save another unnecessary search and they might give u a straight answer what they don't like on ur file.

curious_1

Ah nice. Cheers for the input guys.

It's very hard to get a feedback on the reason of rejection. I've tried. Customer care agents don't have a clue.

boo_star

darkidoe wrote: »

I would try appealing the rejection explaining your circumstances, and showing proof of settling the defaults. Save another unnecessary search and they might give u a straight answer what they don't like on ur file.

Waste of time, they decided when they declined.

boo_star

curious_1 wrote: »

Ah nice. Cheers for the input guys.

It's very hard to get a feedback on the reason of rejection. I've tried. Customer care agents don't have a clue.

They won't be told, it's automated for the most part. They will have a division that deals solely with lending but their guidelines aren't made public (public being the company as a whole.)

curious_1

Update guys:

So applied for Santander 123. On the hope that since I bank with them and my internal score was high enough to receive a card. In fact, one of the staff I spoke to, who stated that he used to be in the sales department of credit cards. He said, if he was still there, he would have definitely given me a card based on my internal scoring.

Based on the above, went ahead to try apply for a card. Lo and behold, got declined.

Funny thing is, I've now opened a barclays account. With the hope that I will use it, develop an internal scoring too and maybe try with them later on (since they supposedly have a credit card that is quite good for building credit - if we are to assume the whole credit scoring fiasco exists). It turns out Barclays performed a credit check on me and it had a negative impact on my credit file. Why I don't know.

Now I have 2 occurrence having a negative impact on my file. One from Santander (understandable) and Barclays. Not great.

I suppose best plan of action now, is to wait atlas 6 months before I try again. Correct??

Thanks in advance.

Kim_13

Current accounts can be a credit product since there is always the possibility of going into an unarranged overdraft. For this reason, they are credit searched.

Santander have probably done you a favour. There's now a £36 a year fee on the 123 CC and the changed terms for new applicants means that it's harder to make anything out of the card or even break even.

SeduLOUs

Kim_13 wrote: »

Santander have probably done you a favour. There's now a £36 a year fee on the 123 CC and the changed terms for new applicants means that it's harder to make anything out of the card or even break even.

Yep. Unless you either have a mortgage with them, or exceptionally high mobile/TV packages, or a lot of savings (like £10k plus) then there are better alternatives now.

Kim_13

SeduLOUs wrote: »

Yep. Unless you either have a mortgage with them, or exceptionally high mobile/TV packages, or a lot of savings (like £10k plus) then there are better alternatives now.

That's the 123 Current Account (£60/year.)

The 123 Credit Card is 1% on Supermarkets, 2% on Department Stores and 3% on Transport. Historically only the Transport cashback was capped at £9 per month, but now all three are capped at only £3. So the max possible gain is only £6 per month, and that's highly unlikely; many people seem to shop only rarely at department stores. Petrol bought from supermarket petrol stations (often the cheapest option) goes through on supermarket spends as it's done by MCC. Only petrol stations, National Rail and TfL falls within the 3%, so anyone living outside of a TfL area but whose bus service accepted contactless card payment would get nothing back on those transactions as it stands.

In my view, a 123 Credit Card is now only worthwhile if one has a 123 Current Account, since they waive the first year's fee. So 123 Current Account customers may as well take the card and cancel after a year (though even the fee waiver is going for cards taken out on or after 11th January.)

curious_1

Update: So didn't apply for Vanquis again. Someone I knew just got declined. Ha!

As a solution, I applied for cashplus, and have plans to apply for their credit builder attribute. Use this to rebuild my credit history. I've just had to send them my proof of ID and address. See how it goes.

SeduLOUs

Kim_13 wrote: »

Petrol bought from supermarket petrol stations (often the cheapest option) goes through on supermarket spends as it's done by MCC.

What's MCC?

I'm 99.99% sure my petrol spend at Tesco petrol stations is qualifying for 3% cashback, as I regularly earn £5+ in the 3% category, don't really buy petrol anywhere else (maybe an odd tenner towards the end of the month) and only use public transport once in a blue moon...

I reconciled my cashback to my statement after the first month to work out which of my local small shops qualified as 'supermarkets' but I'll be honest in saying I haven't dug into the details since.