Issues with barclays/credit score

adamditz

Hi all, new here... run out of people to ask for advice so i’m hoping somebody here can!

Ok so, I have a Natwest current account, my wages go in to this (or they did, keep reading), my DD outgoings come out of it and it is my main account.

i also have a barclays credit card. In order to help manage my money, i set up a barclays current account online, i pay myself £200 a week from my main natwest account and i use that as my food/petrol/play money, it’s working a treat helping me budget.

when i applies for that barclays account, my credit card was nearly maxed, so i assume that was the reason that barclays only gave me a basic current account which does not support apple pay or any overdraft etc.
my credit card i have now totally paid off, and i have no more debts thanks to the way i decided to budget.
since this, i’ve been in to barclays on 3 separate occasions to try and upgrade the basic current account to a standard one, purely so i can use apple pay. The first time they told me i haven’t had the account long enough, second time they told me i needed to have my wages from work paid in to it to be considered (which i went away and did) and today i’ve been back, spent 4 hours in the bank and today they have no idea why the system keeps turning me down.
i showed them my credit score, which is 942 currently, and they told me there system is offering me loans at decent rates so they have no idea why it’s turning me down for a current account. To add insult to injury, the banker i dealt with spoke to various different teams on the phone, and advised her to re try as a new application multiple times, which means now i’ve had 3 credit searches put on my file in the same day! she’s now told me she advises i don’t apply for anything else for 6 months!

i’ve spoken to experian on the banks advice and they couldn’t help, and i’ve looked through my credit report and i see no reason why it’s turning me down. barclays mentioned something about “data exception” and spoke to a team about it but didn’t elaborate further.

ideally, i’d like to stick with barclays, as my credit card is long standing and with them, and it keeps the account in the same online banking app...

can’t help but feel i’ve been wronged as now with all the searches on my file i’ll probablt get turned down anywhere else i went?

what do i do when neither barclays or experian say they can help?

Thanks in advance!

adamditz

just to add, the reason i’m so keen on the barclays account is how fast transactions show up on the account, with natwest, i have to use a calculator to figure out what i’ve spent looking at the available vs current balances, and that’s highly annoying. barclays is instant

worried_jim

Forget about Barclays and just get a Monzo account. Transactions are live and grouped together by type, it’s the future of banking.

https://monzo.com/

takman

worried_jim wrote: »

Forget about Barclays and just get a Monzo account. Transactions are live and grouped together by type, it’s the future of banking.

https://monzo.com/

+1 for Monzo or a Starling Bank Account which both have apps that instantly notify you of any spending and your current balance.

Starling is currently the best of the two if you travel abroad as you can make unlimited withdrawals and spend in different currency without any fees and an almost perfect exchange rate. Monzo has recenetly changed to only allow £200 a month to be withdrawn without fees abroad (which is still decent compared to "high street" bank).

Also it's worth mentioning that your "Credit Score" is not a good indicator of whether or not you will get credit and there are three main credit reference agencies in the UK that hold data about you and many different companies that will each generate a different credit score for you.

adamditz

Thanks for the replies. Just been reading up on both, starling looks perfect for what i need, as does monzo apart from the lack of apple pay, which is very useful to me.

slightly sceptical of the “unknown” nature of them though?
tempted to get rid of barclays totally and use that for my day to day spending.

with recent experience of barclays, i’m tempted to get rid of barclays totally including the credit card... but the fact that i’m going to be looking for a mortgage in 2 years time, is it a bad idea to get rid of a long standing credit account and start again (if anybody even accepts me given all the recent searches) with somebody else?

cheers

d123

adamditz wrote: »

Thanks for the replies. Just been reading up on both, starling looks perfect for what i need, as does monzo apart from the lack of apple pay, which is very useful to me.

slightly sceptical of the “unknown” nature of them though?

Starling offers ApplePay. There has also been a fair bit of feedback about them, the thread is at https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5649551

john1002

Starling would be perfect for you and a good chance you’ll get an overdraft as well depending on your credit history, they use call credit but report to all 3 CRA.

Don’t forget Barclays will credit risk score you for different products so you may get a loan but not the upgrade you want, it’s all computer generated and as you found out if computer says no then no staff member can override.

It happens so go starling and see how you get on.

John

[Deleted User]

Ignore the credit score its ficticious