Sainsbury's bait and switch

stoneman

I needed a loan of £7.5K and looked at the best buy Sainsbury's loan.
3.3% for Nectar card holders, sounds good to me.

So with my Experian score of 960 and only 3 credit cards and no loans I applied.

On completing the application I was provisionally accepted but alarm bells rang when in the small print was the wording that (only) 51% of applicants get the 3.3% advertised rate, the other 49% get something worse.

So my offer arrives and it is an offer of a whopping 9.9% !!!

Obviously I'm not going to take it up but of course now my rating will be showing that I have made a loan application recently.

I guess Sainsburys get away with the strap line of 3.3% because just over half (so they say) get that rate.

I feel that this very important information should be quite clearly stated on the application front page. Then someone who might not have a very good credit rating can make the decision whether to apply or not, so as to not impact on their credit footprnt.

tomtontom

You'll be hard pushed to find a lender that does not operate in exactly the same way.

The information is clearly stated in the Key Benefits. Did you not read this before applying?

Pixie5740

It's hardly bait & switch when it says in big bold letters "Representative APR," on the Sainsburys loan landing page. This is how the vast majority of lenders advertise their loan rates, until your application is assessed by checking your credit files lenders don't know what rate they will offer you.

PeacefulWaters

The OPs signature line explains how the world works quite well ... irony at its very best!

The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.

Caz3121

stoneman wrote: »

On completing the application I was provisionally accepted but alarm bells rang when in the small print was the wording that (only) 51% of applicants get the 3.3% advertised rate, the other 49% get something worse.

It is actually 51% of successful applicants
you may have 100 people apply, 20 get rejected for the loan then, of the 80 that are accepted, 41 will get the representative rate and 39 will get a different offer
as far as I know all lenders operate in the same way...and they do not need to tell you what their individual criteria is to get the lowest rate

DCFC79

The 3.3% is what you could be offered which is dependent on your credit history (score isn't of any use for lenders) and the data you supplied in the application.

All that's recorded is a search was made, a pack of chocolate hob nobs will definitely increase your score.

Sainsbury's are known (going by the forum posts) to be a little picky when it comes to loans.

Maybe the 9.9% is the best you can get, try another lender.

andyfromotley

Plenty of posts on here from people who dont get the advertised rate from Sainsbury's and then go on to get it elsewhere. Just apply elsewhere having used the eligibility checker.

There has been endless speculation about how Sainsburys and others decide who gets the headline rate. But we dont know their criteria and i have simply given up trying to work it out.

Move on, a search on your credit history is of littel consequence. Its effect on your credit 'score' is of absolutely no consequence.

YorkshireBoy

Probably one for the OP (or perhaps someone else can remember from their application?)...

Does the Sainsbury's loan eligibility checker just return the likelihood of acceptance, and not provide an indicative APR?

stoneman

YorkshireBoy wrote: »

Probably one for the OP (or perhaps someone else can remember from their application?)...

Does the Sainsbury's loan eligibility checker just return the likelihood of acceptance, and not provide an indicative APR?

Yes it just tells you if you will be accepted.

YorkshireBoy

stoneman wrote: »

Yes it just tells you if you will be accepted.

That's not so good then! I seem to remember Nationwide quoting an APR on their credit card soft search eligibility checker. Can't see why Sainsbury's can't do the same, being as they're not going to get any more data from a subsequent hard search over and above what they've received from the soft search.

stoneman

Pixie5740 wrote: »

It's hardly bait & switch when it says in big bold letters "Representative APR," on the Sainsburys loan landing page. This is how the vast majority of lenders advertise their loan rates, until your application is assessed by checking your credit files lenders don't know what rate they will offer you.

Sorry I didn't know what Representative APR meant. Do now though.

BTW I have never ever been offered anything but the rate advertised in all the years of having loans. And I am nearly 60.

I thought they would have checked the credit files before accepting the application? So at that point I would have known straight away what rate I would be offered.