Sainsbury's bait and switch

Pixie5740

YorkshireBoy wrote: »

The 'rules' were changed a while ago now, so customers were not penalised for shopping around for financial products. So in came quotation searches. Exactly the same as an application search, but not visible to other lenders.


The FCA Handbook, and the OFT's Irresponsible Lending - Guidance for Creditors, contain further information.

Yes but a quotation search is not as in-depth as a full application search. Therefore, all a lender can do after a quotation search is give an indication as to whether or not an applicant might be successful. It is possible for a quotation search to say, "yes probably," but the full application search to come back as, "nae chance."

YorkshireBoy

Pixie5740 wrote: »

It is possible for a quotation search to say, "yes probably," but the full application search to come back as, "nae chance."

Indeed it is, as has been found many times on here.

But the fact remains that a quotation search returns all the customer data an application search does (from the chosen CRA - see below), but maybe that in itself is not fair for several reasons...

They may only search one CRA (there are 3, so there may be reason for rejection when the application search is made, as lenders generally, in my experience, search 2 of the 3).

Additionally, at the quotation/eligibility stage they (probably?) don't search FPA files. So chance of a rejection later on due to that.

And finally, they may well not get CII and CATO data from the quotation search, as that's not customer data, but how the CRA interprets the customer's data.

So in a fair world, they should search all the CRAs and FPAs they'll be using later on during the application, at the quotation stage...otherwise they're not keeping to the spirit of the 'rules' and 'guidelines'.