Did anyone get a sensible credit limit offer on the MBNA 0% card?

DullGreyGuy

Anti-credit is fine but there is nothing wrong with using a credit card simply to get cash back, airmile, club card points or whatever your preference is and pay the balance off in full once the statement is produced. Obviously you start getting into dangerous territory when the paying off uses next month salary rather than this months. 

As long as you dont overspend then you are simply leveraging the benefits of certain cards which tends to be more generous than debit cards. 

sghughes42

DullGreyGuy said:

As long as you dont overspend then you are simply leveraging the benefits of certain cards which tends to be more generous than debit cards. 

That's pretty much exactly what I do.

Barclaycard and Halifax Clarity for overseas spending.

AMEX for cashback and points.

Tesco card I opened a long time back when I shopped there.

I think the only time I missed a card payment was knocking on for 30 years ago when I was a student and the statement didn't get delivered and it didn't register with me that one should have arrived. Quickly learned that lesson and other than that I've paid off each month in full.

It must just be the fact I've closed several cards in quick succession. Maybe I should have complained more to Barclaycard as that closure wasn't intentional and seems to have harmed my rating more than I appreciated at the time.

Chrysalis

sghughes42 said:

I've just tried applying for one of these and was offered a miserly £500 credit limit. Other cards I've had in the past have had limits in the low tens of thousands, and it's a fraction of my monthly income.

Is the offer actually serious and have others received a sensible limit? I've got an 'excellent' score on Credit Karma so no obvious issues...

Is my highest limit card, also ironic as its my only card that required manual approval (referred on application).
Ignore the offer.
For me I applied twice, first one was auto approved with mediocre limit (although nowhere near as bad as £500) and not the best 0% available (shortened terms).
I waited a bit, applied again, got referred, got the full length 0% and a starting 5 digit limit.
This was some years ago when the credit market was being more generous, things have tightened up now.

Grumpy_chap

sghughes42 said:

I've just tried applying for one of these and was offered a miserly £500 credit limit. Other cards I've had in the past have had limits in the low tens of thousands, and it's a fraction of my monthly income.

Is the offer actually serious and have others received a sensible limit? I've got an 'excellent' score on Credit Karma so no obvious issues...

Who is to say that £500 is not a sensible limit?

Your credit score is immaterial, but your credit history, income, liabilities will all have been assessed to determine the risk that the lender is willing to take.
If you have other credit facilities running to "tens of thousands", then your affordability to support further credit may be low.  You may not be using all of those other facilities but a lender cannot be sure that you won't go out tomorrow and max everything out.

Lenders seemingly can't win.  If they gave you a generous limit, then you maxed everything out and ran into trouble, would this thread be referring to "irresponsible lending" instead?

[Deleted User]

MBNA isn't a standalone operation and part of the Lloyds Banking Group so they'll have access to pretty much all your Halifax data; not just the CRA stuff.

They will be looking at risk and profitability - a Halifax Clarity only used occasionally with a decent credit limit doesn't scream a profitable customer to me. 

sghughes42

Grumpy_chap said:

Who is to say that £500 is not a sensible limit?

Your credit score is immaterial, but your credit history, income, liabilities will all have been assessed to determine the risk that the lender is willing to take.
If you have other credit facilities running to "tens of thousands", then your affordability to support further credit may be low.  You may not be using all of those other facilities but a lender cannot be sure that you won't go out tomorrow and max everything out.

Lenders seemingly can't win.  If they gave you a generous limit, then you maxed everything out and ran into trouble, would this thread be referring to "irresponsible lending" instead?

When I funnel more than that in to savings each month it doesn't seem that sensible to me. But then maybe that fact tells them I don't need a credit card to borrow and am intending to use it in a way that won't make them money?

I *had* credit facilities in the tens of thousands - I closed all but one last year. I went from being able to borrow something like £40k if I'd maxed all my cards out to £4500.

I'm struggling to see the point in offering someone a card where the limit is around a fifth of their monthly take home pay. They are wasting their time and money processing applications like that and issuing cards.

sghughes42

[Deleted User] said:

MBNA isn't a standalone operation and part of the Lloyds Banking Group so they'll have access to pretty much all your Halifax data; not just the CRA stuff.

They will be looking at risk and profitability - a Halifax Clarity only used occasionally with a decent credit limit doesn't scream a profitable customer to me. 

That could well be the case. I can't see why they bother issuing the card at all though - when it's such a tiny fraction of my income I have no incentive to use and make them any return at all. They'd have been better saying no and not issuing the card at all than spending money doing so and me not using it.

sghughes42

Chrysalis said:

Ignore the offer.

That is the one thing about this which is, I don't know, worrying might be the wrong word.

I did ignore the offer. I even had to answer questions why I wasn't proceeding with the offer, but they've issued the card anyway which is likely to make it harder for me to apply for any others for the next few months. As soon as I actually get the card and can register for their services I'm going to be asking some hard questions as to why they proceeded with an application I clearly said I wasn't interested in completing.

DullGreyGuy

Chrysalis said:

sghughes42 said:

I've just tried applying for one of these and was offered a miserly £500 credit limit. Other cards I've had in the past have had limits in the low tens of thousands, and it's a fraction of my monthly income.

Is the offer actually serious and have others received a sensible limit? I've got an 'excellent' score on Credit Karma so no obvious issues...

Is my highest limit card, also ironic as its my only card that required manual approval (referred on application).

Mine was even more extreme, was declined on the online application and challenged it, at the time most my cards were around £5k limit but the person I spoke to said she could offer me a £10k limit on the card I'd applied for but that was the max initial limit but if I wanted to go for the fee free higher grade card she could offer me £12,500. Slight difference to the initial no. 

Having just applied to MBNA myself yesterday, was v. surprised with their 5 digit limit and highest ever first digit (ignoring AmEx chargecard and its oddities)

sghughes42

DullGreyGuy said:

Mine was even more extreme, was declined on the online application and challenged it, at the time most my cards were around £5k limit but the person I spoke to said she could offer me a £10k limit on the card I'd applied for but that was the max initial limit but if I wanted to go for the fee free higher grade card she could offer me £12,500. Slight difference to the initial no. 

Having just applied to MBNA myself yesterday, was v. surprised with their 5 digit limit and highest ever first digit (ignoring AmEx chargecard and its oddities)

I never actually updated this, but despite the paltry initial limit and my declining to progress the application they actually sent me a card with a £7k limit in the end. Still never got an answer why the progressed an application I said I didn't want to, but the result was actually a useful limit.