marbles - credit limit increase - should I accept it?

OceanSound

After four months of being a marbles customer, I've just been offered a credit limit increase (from £450 to £1700).

The limit will come in to effect automatically on the 07 April 2019 if I do nothing or don't decline it .

It seems if I chose to accept the new limit, it will leave a hard search marker on the credit file. Slightly concerned about this because when I check Clearscore and CreditWise it says I've 'made too many credit applications in the past' (its been saying this since OCt 2018). Because of this, I've not made any applications since Nov last year, and want to keep it that way for another few months.

On the plus side if i chose to accept the credit limit increase it would bring down the total credit utilization, which is at around 44%. (actually it's around 36% now since I recently cleared a full statement balance of £1426 before the 0% introductory purchases offer ended).

Any thoughts/feelings on if you'd accept limit increase or decline. BTW, I don't particularly need a limit increase, so does this mean I should decline it. But then I figure the whole point of a credit card is so that it would come in handy on a rainy day.

p.s. pretty sure marbles do a hard credit file search for limit increases. I've sent them two messages to confirm, not received a reply yet. They used to respond quickly (next working day).

[Deleted User]

Accept it. You old anew limits are both very low.

I don't believe they do searçhes for limit increases and it doesn't matter if they do.

Willing2Learn

OceanSound wrote: »

After four months of being a marbles customer, I've just been offered a credit limit increase (from £450 to £1700)...

… I recently cleared a full statement balance of £1426 before the 0% introductory purchases offer ended...

I am a little confused by your post.


You say you currently have a credit limit of £450, yet you also say you cleared a full statement balance of £1,426 (well over your current limit). The two things you are saying appear to be in conflict with one another...

[Deleted User]

^^^ this, unless you mean the limit was £1450?

Also why would it leave a hard search, who told you that?

SnowTiger

OceanSound wrote: »

It seems if I chose to accept the new limit, it will leave a hard search marker on the credit file.

Is that what they told you or is that an assumption?

Marbles is issued by NewDay. I have an Aqua card which is also issued by NewDay; they've never performed a hard search against my credit file when they've increased my limit.

Off the top of my head I can't recall a time when an automatic credit limit increase on any of my cards has led to a hard credit search.

If I were you I'd accept the limit increase. Worst case: your low limit of £450 probably does you more harm than an additional credit search.

maxximus75

Non requested CLI's are soft searches.


Even requested ones are usually soft unless they go outside of the maximum limit assigned to you by a provider.

A4445

I’ve got an outfit card provided by NewDay and I’ve had a few limit increases. They haven’t done any kind of search when the limit was increased.

eskbanker

Willing2Learn wrote: »

I am a little confused by your post.


You say you currently have a credit limit of £450, yet you also say you cleared a full statement balance of £1,426 (well over your current limit). The two things you are saying appear to be in conflict with one another...

OP doesn't say the £1,426 balance was on the Marbles card and was referring to total credit utilisation dropping from 44% to 36% by clearing it, so if £1,426 was 8% of available credit then OP obviously has a number of cards, another of which (not Marbles) was presumably the one that was recently cleared....

Ben8282

OceanSound wrote: »

I recently cleared a full statement balance of £1426 before the 0% introductory purchases offer ended

Willing2Learn wrote: »

I am a little confused by your post.
You say you currently have a credit limit of £450, yet you also say you cleared a full statement balance of £1,426 (well over your current limit). The two things you are saying appear to be in conflict with one another...

OP does not say that this balance was on the Marbles card. However, it does make me wonder why an individual able to get a 0% card with a credit limit sufficient to cover this balance chose to apply for a Marbles card.
Accepting the credit limit increase will not result in a hard search. Accept it to get rid of the pathetic original Marbles credit limit from your credit files.

Terry_Towelling

Not sure why so many people are slaves to their so-called credit score and allow it to dictate how they live their lives.

OP probably hasn't made too many credit applications but the score provider is simply saying that their score has suffered or might suffer because of the number of credit applications.

Perhaps OP can tell us if these multiple credit applications were accepted or refused. If they were accepted, then who cares about the score dropping - it clearly didn't make a difference to those applications.

Now, whether that reduction in score really would have had an effect on their ability to get further credit since November 2018 I don't know, but it is academic anyway because it put the frighteners on OP and they stopped applying. Now the score provider can say, 'Look your score is going up again, aren't we doing a brilliant job for you' - oblivious to the fact that they've stopped OP from living their life their way and applying for credit according to their own agenda.

OceanSound

Thanks for all the replies.

The info I saw online (mostly U.S websites) about the topic all said best to ask the credit card provider if they do a hard credit search. A couple of posters have confirmed this is not the case for the type of CLI we are talking about here.

Just have one further question. Say if i accept the new limit (most likely), one month down the line, I apply for a card (which is offering 0% on purchases), is the new marbles limit always going to be seen favourably, or could it actually work unfavourably?

For example, if the new provider was going to offer me a £1000 limit, could they see that marbles have increased my limit to £1700 (or indeed see that my total credit available is £1250 more than what it used to be) so end up offering me a limit lower than £1000?

In effect, do some provider look at the total credit available, as well as the total/per card utilization when setting the limit?

My total credit (of all cards) work out to be just under 50% of Salary. I remember someone mentioned that total credit available can be as much as 2-3 times of salary (depending on your credit history).

So, I assume, taking all this in to account, the Marbles credit limit increase wouldn't affect the limit set by another provider?..or would it depend on that particular card provider?