O2 Declined despite perfect credit score/no missed payments for MSE £6/mth SIM

jkd_3

Hi,

I have had an O2 monthly contract for several years and last week applied for an additional O2 Sim-only contract (a whole £6/mth as promoted by MSE).

I was rejected. Shock, horror, first time in my life. 

I have a perfect credit score, never missed payments, electoral roll over 21 years, etc. I took out the 0% Apple/Barclays offer 3 months ago to buy an iPhone and now getting the SIM-only deal.

I have checked with Equifax and I have checked with O2, they have stated I have not met their business policies (their criteria). This is random shocking. I mean what could possibly be in their policy to turn down a model credit worthy customer for a £6/mth SIM contract. Ironically, I was hoping to move another mobile contract to them too so it is all in one place.

Anyone know (Martin?) what are the business policies?

MorningcoffeeIV

Have a look at all three of your credit files (never the scores). 

What do they say?

Martin won't have a clue about confidential business criteria. But it won't be 'random shocking', whatever that may be.

jkd_3

That's the thing, I have maximum credit score, and have done for over 20 years (it only goes down 10 points when I take out a new mobile contract every few years and then goes back up to 1000 within a month or two). My electoral roll is static for over 20 years. No missed payments, nada.

powerful_Rogue

jkd_3 said:

That's the thing, I have maximum credit score, and have done for over 20 years (it only goes down 10 points when I take out a new mobile contract every few years and then goes back up to 1000 within a month or two). My electoral roll is static for over 20 years. No missed payments, nada.

Your score is made up. The only people that see it are you and the credit reference agency. The only thing o2 would have seen is your credit history, so look at that from all three agencies.

jkd_3

Yep, perfect payment/financial history. Perfect electoral roll registration > 20 years.
Never missed a payment in nearly 30 years. (3 mortgages 2 paid off, one Apple 0% finance and the last two months of a 0% sofa repayment, one O2 contract and one Three contract). Low credit utilisation. 

O2 has confirmed that they use(d) Equifax.

backinbusiness

Then for whatever reason, you just don't meet their criteria.  It's not personal, so try not to take it personally.  BiB x 

LeRedoute

More than likely the £6/m SIM is designed to bring in new business and as you're an existing customer they have no reason to give you a cheap SIMO deal.

Being declined doesn't automatically mean you're uncreditworthy.

jkcool

Sorry, bit late for the discussion. 

Same thing happened for my wife too. She has excellent credit score. We have been given the same reason. By any chance, did you apply late in the evening? Or did you get any errors with post code look up? We had errors initially and got it cleared later but eventually got a straight decline. 

We applied it again in 2 weeks during office hours and approved straight away.  Thought it was strange 

cymruchris

jkcool said:

Sorry, bit late for the discussion. 

Same thing happened for my wife too. She has excellent credit score. We have been given the same reason. By any chance, did you apply late in the evening? Or did you get any errors with post code look up? We had errors initially and got it cleared later but eventually got a straight decline. 

We applied it again in 2 weeks during office hours and approved straight away.  Thought it was strange 

In the past I have noticed that the O2 website in particular seems to go offline overnight - maybe when they are updating their deals or whatever. There might be a grain of truth in that if you put your application in just as it was going into, or had just gone into shutdown, it could have been thrown out and rejected. Was there a hard search recorded for your initial application? (And btw - your score means nothing - it's only seen by you - it's your history that counts - not a magic made up number).

jkcool

cymruchris said:
 Was there a hard search recorded for your initial application? (And btw - your score means nothing - it's only seen by you - it's your history that counts - not a magic made up number).

There was no hard search done. CreditKarma instantly generated an affordability check soft search. I have followed the rejection up with O2 credit referrals. After 3 days I got a response from them. Here it is

Upon looking into your application, we can see it has been declined by our back office team.
We have closed our investigation into your query and have forwarded your email to the relevant team for
review.
They will contact you directly once they have completed their investigation into your query.
Unfortunately we are unable to provide any timescales for response.

I did not get any further response from them. Since that application did not generate any hard search even after 2 weeks, I thought probably it was due to some IT things going on in the background.  We did another one (USwitch £8/m) and went through without any issues.  One thing I learnt from this was if an application involves credit checking, DO NOT do it after 10PM and before 8 AM.  There are several interconnected IT systems in the process and a blip on one of those could affect the application. Ideally, it should not affect customers but practically it does. 

(btw, I should have used the word credit history rather than credit score )

cymruchris

jkcool said:

cymruchris said:
 Was there a hard search recorded for your initial application? (And btw - your score means nothing - it's only seen by you - it's your history that counts - not a magic made up number).

There was no hard search done. CreditKarma instantly generated an affordability check soft search. I have followed the rejection up with O2 credit referrals. After 3 days I got a response from them. Here it is

Upon looking into your application, we can see it has been declined by our back office team.
We have closed our investigation into your query and have forwarded your email to the relevant team for
review.
They will contact you directly once they have completed their investigation into your query.
Unfortunately we are unable to provide any timescales for response.

I did not get any further response from them. Since that application did not generate any hard search even after 2 weeks, I thought probably it was due to some IT things going on in the background.  We did another one (USwitch £8/m) and went through without any issues.  One thing I learnt from this was if an application involves credit checking, DO NOT do it after 10PM and before 8 AM.  There are several interconnected IT systems in the process and a blip on one of those could affect the application. Ideally, it should not affect customers but practically it does. 

(btw, I should have used the word credit history rather than credit score )

That potentially does lead to the conclusion that applying just as they're taking their website offline for 'maintenance' might result in an auto-decline. Out of interest was there a hard search on your second application?