Zero Balance / Credit Rating

pauldoghouse

Hi - I was looking for some advice. Virgin Money have told me that paying off your credit card in full every month doesn’t count towards your credit score at all. I’ve been paying my card off in full every month to maintain and improve my credit rating, but I was told that it doesn’t matter. I complained about this as I’m sure that’s not correct, but the complaints team said nothing wrong had happened. If this is the advice they give people - if it is incorrect - how many people have ratings worse than they should. If people just took that on face value, that’s a lot of people damaging the health of their credit. Any suggestions on how to combat this bad advice?

Carrot007

Before "all the usual comments" come in.

Who exactly told you this, and  in what capacity and why did tehy tell you this. I cannot fathopm why they would even comment unless you were being a bother and to get you to go away.

It certainly would not make you credit rating (other poeple will be commenting on scroe soon...) worse (except if you say have to much credit available and they don't want to extend mroe). Though a lot of companies will rate you higher if you build up debt and then get rid (of course there are companies that will see this as a bad point).

So unless you come out with the other 99% of information then stop worrying.

ThisnotThat

It depends on what they meant.  Paying it off in full before a statement is generated won't help things, no.  You'd need to pay things off in full after the statement was generated.  Perhaps there were some crossed wires here.

pauldoghouse

There had been a problem with my login - turned out to be a system error and they had to restart my profile again or something - but that took over a month so I was unable to view my balance (or anything for that matter). It originated with them spelling my place of birth incorrectly so I was locked out… long story basically. I wasn’t being a bother but I did say that I was not that impressed with being shut out of my finances. I said I’d been paying my account off in full every month as I was looking to improve my credit - but with not being able to see my balance I had no idea what I had to pay off - and that when he said that paying your account off in full doesn’t effect your credit score. I just can’t see how this is true. 

The man was very rude to me so I filed a complaint. I got a letter today saying that they had done nothing wrong (despite the dodgy info and the whole locking me out of my account) so I wanted to see what people thought. 

[Deleted User]

pauldoghouse said:

I said I’d been paying my account off in full every month as I was looking to improve my credit - but with not being able to see my balance I had no idea what I had to pay off - and that when he said that paying your account off in full doesn’t effect your credit score. I just can’t see how this is true. 

. 

It all depends on what credit score you're talking about.

Any change to your CRA scores is irrelevant and should be ignored.

Lender credit scores are based on their own criteria. Mainstream lenders will prefer to see you clearing in full, sub prime may score you higher if you don't.

But the bottom line is you should clear in full unless you're on a 0%.

Thrugelmir

pauldoghouse said:

Hi - I was looking for some advice. Virgin Money have told me that paying off your credit card in full every month doesn’t count towards your credit score at all.

Ask yourself what it actually proves.