Credit score History

jaimeswritings

Hi,
I am looking to get a report of my credit score history since may 2019. to know if it has dropped, and if so why or since when.

The reason being is that i opened a bank account with nationwide. they asked me if i wanted a credit card of 0% apr for a year, and when i said yes the offer me £7k of credit. I mentioned that it was ok as I was given by Amex £15k credit the month before.
so the admin person told me that I shoudl not have such amoutn of credit if if i only used £1k a month maximum, cuz that would impact on my credit score.
I decided to take only a £2.5k limit with their card and reduce my Amex to £2k.
I checked my credit score this months on the credit club and from 939 in like april, it is down to 749. I looked it up and I read that the issue is that every month I am using more than 50% of my available credit, and that impacts negatvely.
I complained to nationwide, and they said that cuz I got no proof of what it was said in the room and I made the decission myself, they are not responsible. I argued this and they said to go to the financial "onbusmen".


I think if I could get evidence that my credit score has decresed since i opeened the account with, them I may be able to proof that I was given missinformation and this has impacted on my credit score.


does anyone know how I could get a hsitory of credit score fluctuations?


regards
jaime

[Deleted User]

No point. The credit score is made up and has no bearing on your credit worthiness. Whether it rose or fell is irrelevant and would prove nothing.

You just need to manage your credit responsibly and while cutting your limits may or not have been the best idea, the bank aren't responsible for your decisions.

Ben8282

jaimeswritings wrote: »

Hi,
I decided to take only a £2.5k limit with their card and reduce my Amex to £2k.

A somewhat foolish move based on very wrong advice.

Your credit score is a made up number used by the CRA's for marketing purposes and is not seen by lenders. It is the content of your credit files which is important.

One thing that lenders may take into consideration is utilisation % and credit limits. The total of my credit limits exceeds my annual income. Unless you have a very low income,£22k is not a high amount of available credit to have. A high amount of available credit may be offputing to bad credit/credit builder lenders but not to mainstream card providers.

Taking these cards in isolation and assuming you have no other cards and no other balances, If you were to use the £1k per-month mentioned, with £22k available credit, your utilisation % would be 4.5%.
With your new reduced credit limits your utilisation % would be 22%.
The lower the utilisation %, so long as it is not 0, the better.
Using more than 50% of your available credit is not good. Was that before or after the credit limit reductions?. This is said not from the point of view of the score but from the point of view of how future applications for credit may be judged.

The good limits that you were given is a sign that lenders trust you. With the very low credit limits you now have, it looks like lenders don't trust you very much and are only prepared to give you low limits. Even worse, nobody will know why your Amex limit was so drastically reduced. A potential future lender may look at the massive reduction and say 'looks like something really spooked Amex to make them reduce the credit limit on a new card by £13k. Wonder what it was. Better be cautious with this customer'.

jaimeswritings wrote: »

Hi,
I complained to nationwide, and they said that cuz I got no proof of what it was said in the room and I made the decission myself, they are not responsible. I argued this and they said to go to the financial "onbusmen".


I think if I could get evidence that my credit score has decresed since i opeened the account with, them I may be able to proof that I was given missinformation and this has impacted on my credit score.

You have no way of proving what was said to you by Nationwide. Evidence of a drop in credit score may be evidence that you have made a foolish mistake by reducing your credit limits, but not evidence of what was said. The recent hard searches on your credit files for 1 bank account and 2 credit cards in a 2 month period will also have played a part in temporarily reducing your score. I think that any further complaining would be a waste of your time. Best thing to do would be to apply for credit limit increases in due course.

May I also make another point. In the space of 2 months you successfully applied for 2 credit cards and were given very respectable limits on them. What more did you want? Is this not in itself proof that everything was OK with your credit files and ability to obtain credit.

boo_star

Stop reducing your limits.

If a card is useless, cancel it, but asking for limit reductions looks bad.

Any lender seeing it will usually assume the worst, the other lender doesn't trust you, rather than you requesting it.

IvanDP

boo_star wrote: »

Stop reducing your limits.

If a card is useless, cancel it, but asking for limit reductions looks bad.

Any lender seeing it will usually assume the worst, the other lender doesn't trust you, rather than you requesting it.

Sound advice
I have accepted every credit limit increase i have ever been offered
(Even though I use very very little of the available credit)

If I were to believe my "credit score" nobody would lend me anything :rotfl:

jaimeswritings

Thanks for the responses!
I won't bother to take it further then.