Credit check "cool off" period?

MattMontreal

Hi all,

Today I switched to Nationwide for the £200 bonus and I was looking at the Barclaycard here to do some "stoozing".

I haven't had a lot of credit checks in the last year or so and, generally, my credit rating is pretty good. Nonetheless, I know there was a (successful but still) hard credit check by Nationwide.

Should I wait a certain amount of time before applying for the Barclaycard so as to not have too many hard checks around the same time? Or does it matter?

Thanks!

MorningcoffeeIV

Ignore your rating. It's made up so one sees or uses that.

If your history and credit management is good, then there's no harm in applying now.  But if you're more on the risky side, spread your applications out.

MattMontreal

I’m a pretty safe bet as far as credit history goes, I would have thought. What would “risky” mean in this case?

Nasqueron

If you have an established history of making payments on time, no missed or late payments etc that is good, same with not having many credit searches / multiple applications in a short time. However, if you were already using a lot of credit and/or had limited income then you might be more of a risk.

I have never had any missed or late payments, all my BT 0% cards are paid more than the minimum but my total debt is quite high, I tried for a "pre-approved" Virgin card on the off chance in July and it went for manual review and was rejected, first BT card I ever got declined for. It is what it is, I am going to complete this month's payments, give it a while for the CRAs to update and try for a different card via top cash back for a bit of cash to offset some of the BT fee if I got the card