Have you applied for a credit card and NOT ended up with the advertised APR?

MSE_Laura_F

Forumites, can you help the MSE Campaigns team with an investigation?

Have you applied for a credit card and found that the advertised (Representative) APR isn’t the one you were ultimately offered? 

If so, what happened? It would be very useful to know:

• Who was the card supplier? 
• At what point of the process did you see the rate rise? (Eg, was it after an initial soft credit check/eligibility calculator, after a full application and hard credit check, or at another point in the process?)
• How much did the APR change?
• What did you decide to do next? (Eg, did you take that product out anyway or look elsewhere, or give up?)
• How would you describe the impact this had, both emotionally and financially?

 Please be careful that you only answer the questions above, and don't give out any personal information.

 Thanks for your time,

 MSE Forum Team

Sandtree

• Cant remember
• Full application but it was before the days that soft checks were common place
• From memory about three percentage points
• Still took the product as was after the introductory offer
• No financial impact as cleared the balance in full each time. Emotional impact at most was a slight surprise/annoyance as at that point had rarely been declined for any prime offering and never had any non representative offers but it made no real world difference so wasnt going to stew on it too long

[Deleted User]

I am curious as to what the point of this is really. Only 50% of successful applicants have to get the rate offered in a deal so obviously some will get higher APR once the bank assesses them. Knowing that, it is 100% guaranteed many people didn't get the advertised rate - in simple terms, 100 people apply successfully, 51 can get the rate to satisfy the rules, thus 49 won't.

Dandytf

recently Nationwide, only 24.9% No Zero % intro offers
Though can't disagree as had a few cards since dmp was complete early 21'

JJ_Egan

No never ever .

MSE_Laura_F

It's been a year since the last comments, but it would be grand to get some more examples (from within the last 10 years) of people being offered a higher APR than advertised.

It would also be useful to know - if you can remember - how much higher it was.

Thanks for everyone who's replied so far.

Ebe_Scrooge

I'm intrigued as to what MSE are hoping to do with this information.

If it's some sort of "campaign" I think you'd be far better to focus your energy on educating people in how credit cards work.  If you pay in full every month then the APR is irrelevant.  If you go in with the intention of carrying a balance for any length of time (assuming it's not 0%) then you should be at least "strongly discouraged" from doing so.  Quite how one would do this, I don't know - but it just seems a somewhat unusual request from MSE in the first place.

MSE_Laura_F

Hello @Ebe_Scrooge,

Information about the campaign can be found here.

Thanks.

JES_F1

Having got myself in a right old mess with credit cards - see signature - I've now got four credit cards (American Express, two Barclaycards, and a Santander Mastercard) that I pay off in full each month.

When applying for those cards, I didn't pay any attention to the APRs as I had no intention of carrying a balance so since getting my first credit card post-DMP in July 2018, I've paid no interest.  They're all used for everyday spending.

If I were to have an emergency - for example, washing machine needs replacing - I can cover it from savings.

MrFrugalFever

When I applied for my 2 credit cards (2 separate providers) I did an eligibility check first which showed me the guaranteed rate and promotional rates, when I applied for them off the back of this information, I got what I had been ‘guaranteed’.

[Deleted User]

MSE_Laura_F said:

Hello @Ebe_Scrooge,

Information about the campaign can be found here.

Thanks.

This is 100% going to go the same way as your campaign for "unfair" OD charges when it went from people paying a fixed fee to paying a % - the banks inevitably all bumped up their OD % so loads of people paid more. If you are trying to force banks to give 66% of the applicants the rate, they will simply increase their lowest rate across the board to cover for the inevitable failures to repay