MSE's Credit Card Eligibility Calculator on a go slow...

Some_Guy

MSE's Credit Card Eligibility Calculator claims it will take 2 minutes, yet I've been waiting an hour now - the page refreshes each minute with a rotating series of messages, along with a countdown clock until the next refresh... but no actual result yet!

I appreciate the tool only does a 'soft search' of one your credit file, but nonetheless I'm wary of resubmitting my query in case it makes me look impatient (though to be honest I am getting a bit impatient with a tool that promised fairly quick results!).

Some of the messages the page has shown....

Sorry to keep you waiting - we're loading your results. The calculator is busy, so this may take longer than usual.

Thanks for waiting - there are lots of people using the tool right now.

Sorry that we can't show your results yet, our servers are spinning as fast as they can.

We're still processing your request, we should get your results shortly.

I get the feeling my query might have dropped down the back of the cupboard, or whatever the cyber equivalent to that might be!

abc.xyz

Use the eligibility checkers on the actual lenders' sites. They're more accurate and some will actually tell you the limit/APR from the eligibility check.

Also, don't worry about looking impatient. You could have 1,000 soft searches; lenders do not seem them.

Some_Guy

Thanks abc.xyz.

Having tried from scratch a second time on the MSE site and after getting nowhere after 10 minutes, I did a quick search around and saw that the firm that powers the MSE checker - "HD Decisions" (part of Experian) - also powers other such eligibility checkers, for example that on the Money.co.uk site and also on uSwitch.

I decided to give it a second try via Money.co.uk (the uSwitch checker also submitted information to Capital One as well as HD Decisions, which I wasn't so keen on - my past history with them and all that!). The Money.co.uk checker worked quickly as promised (so HD Decisions underlying systems were working properly, just the link to the MSE checker seemed to be broken).

However you might be pleased to know that I didn't just follow the path that they pushed me towards and blindly click through from Money.co.uk to a lender via an affiliate link, but instead looked at the other cards that came up in the results and decided to apply for one of them that didn't have an affiliate link.

I then went to that lender's website and used the 'soft check' eligibility checker, got a positive result and then successfully applied.

This is all good, as applying for a credit card was on my to do list for this evening - and now I can get on with other things!

I have, as you might have guessed, used and abused credit cards in the past - though that was some time ago now, and I am a reformed character! I just want to get my credit history going again, but having been burnt in the past I am now going to be very careful!