Barclay Card Reward Card - decline/acceptance

Dawn1966

Last week I applied for the above card and was declined and not very happy about it as I have a good credit rating, but I believe it was due to the fact that I had over 50% owing on another CC - I'm only paying the monthly minimum due to it being interest free until May next year so.
Yesterday, after getting Martin's email about balance transfer cards, I used the eligibility link, and was told I was 100% certain to be accepted for the Barclay's rewards card - the same one I was declined last week.
I completed the application again to be told it was accepted with a £5k limit!
How very strange is that and now I'm wondering if the declined application goes on my credit history and damages it, can I question it when I was successful in applying this week?
Thanks in advance.

Largs

I'm never refused credit whenever I apply for cards and other credit but applied for Barclaycard (the Amazon one) which was referred. I thought nothing of it as it's a flat I live in and sometimes it does that as it can't trace me automatically using the flat position. A week later, declined and told to so write to Equifax and Experian. There's nothing to see on my files anyway as I check all 3 regularly.  Most odd. 

Dawn1966

Largs said:

There's nothing to see on my files anyway as I check all 3 regularly.  Most odd. 

That's very odd, there's nothing showing on mine as yet but probably too early, I will keep an eye though. Thanks.

Nasqueron

Dawn1966 said:

Last week I applied for the above card and was declined and not very happy about it as I have a good credit rating, but I believe it was due to the fact that I had over 50% owing on another CC - I'm only paying the monthly minimum due to it being interest free until May next year so.
Yesterday, after getting Martin's email about balance transfer cards, I used the eligibility link, and was told I was 100% certain to be accepted for the Barclay's rewards card - the same one I was declined last week.
I completed the application again to be told it was accepted with a £5k limit!
How very strange is that and now I'm wondering if the declined application goes on my credit history and damages it, can I question it when I was successful in applying this week?
Thanks in advance.

You don't have any sort of credit rating, the fake numbers you see online are never used by lenders. The banks apply their own criteria for lending, don't place any emotion on banking decisions, they're done by computer - 2 hard searches for the same card with one positive and one negative is strange but there you go, systems have weird outcomes. The hard search will appear in a couple of days no doubt unless the first one messed up somewhere. Ensure you don't pay any of the CRAs for their nonsense "service"

Dawn1966

Just checked my credit file, both applications are registered as soft searches.

Urban_Bumpkin

Funnily enough I've just applied for the Barclay Rewards (using their eligibility checker) and was declined. I've double checked my credit rating with Experian and have a credit rating of 999 out of 999. I'm not sure why they'd reject. 

Dawn1966

Urban_Bumpkin said:

Funnily enough I've just applied for the Barclay Rewards (using their eligibility checker) and was declined. I've double checked my credit rating with Experian and have a credit rating of 999 out of 999. I'm not sure why they'd reject. 

Just apply for it via the MSE eligibility checker instead.

CliveOfIndia

Urban_Bumpkin said:

Funnily enough I've just applied for the Barclay Rewards (using their eligibility checker) and was declined. I've double checked my credit rating with Experian and have a credit rating of 999 out of 999. I'm not sure why they'd reject. 

If you'd have read previous comments on this thread - and numerous other threads on this forum - you'd know that the score you see on your CRA report means absolutely nothing.  A lender looks purely at the raw data contained within your file, compares it against their own unique lending criteria, and decides whether or not to lend to you.

You'll never know why any particular lender rejects you, as their acceptance criteria are highly confidential and commercially sensitive.  But, for whatever reason, you simply don't meet their criteria - it has nothing whatsoever to do with the meaningless CRA score.

Anecdotally Barclays do appear to have rather more strict acceptance criteria than some other lenders.  But that really is just anecdotal - as above, no-one (outside of their risk management department) will know what their criteria are.

Nasqueron

Dawn1966 said:

Urban_Bumpkin said:

Funnily enough I've just applied for the Barclay Rewards (using their eligibility checker) and was declined. I've double checked my credit rating with Experian and have a credit rating of 999 out of 999. I'm not sure why they'd reject. 

Just apply for it via the MSE eligibility checker instead.

Applying via MSE and applying direct are immaterial if OP doesn't meet the credit requirements, using MSE instead won't result in application being approved when Barclays rejected it already

Urban_Bumpkin

CliveOfIndia said:

Urban_Bumpkin said:

Funnily enough I've just applied for the Barclay Rewards (using their eligibility checker) and was declined. I've double checked my credit rating with Experian and have a credit rating of 999 out of 999. I'm not sure why they'd reject. 

If you'd have read previous comments on this thread - and numerous other threads on this forum - you'd know that the score you see on your CRA report means absolutely nothing.  A lender looks purely at the raw data contained within your file, compares it against their own unique lending criteria, and decides whether or not to lend to you.

You'll never know why any particular lender rejects you, as their acceptance criteria are highly confidential and commercially sensitive.  But, for whatever reason, you simply don't meet their criteria - it has nothing whatsoever to do with the meaningless CRA score.

Anecdotally Barclays do appear to have rather more strict acceptance criteria than some other lenders.  But that really is just anecdotal - as above, no-one (outside of their risk management department) will know what their criteria are.

I thought lenders use CRAs and although they're not obligated to give a detailed reason why you were refused credit, they did have to give a reason for the refusal and the CRA that was used. Is that not the case? I'm genuinely interested.

In my case I've not missed a payment on Mortgage, credit card or direct debit of any kind in over 20 years, the mortgage is due to be paid off in full this year, no CCJ's and any credit cards are paid off in full every month.

CliveOfIndia

Urban_Bumpkin said:

I thought lenders use CRAs

They use the CRAs to get hold of your raw data, which they feed into their own internal algorithms to general their own - confidential - internal score.  They can't even see the score dished out by the CRAs.

Urban_Bumpkin said:

although they're not obligated to give a detailed reason why you were refused credit, they did have to give a reason for the refusal and the CRA that was used. Is that not the case? I'm genuinely interested.

No, they don't have to give a reason.  Firstly, if they did, you could just make another application and be - shall we say - less than economical with the truth on your application, gaming the system to make sure you passed their checks.  Plus, it would expose some of their acceptance criteria - which, as I said earlier, are highly confidential.

Some lenders will publish which CRAs they use (though they're not obliged to).  Not that it matters - each CRA will hold broadly similar information (the only caveat being that not all lenders report to all 3 CRAs.  So you may, for example, see a credit card account being reported to one CRA but not another).

And ultimately, remember that access to credit is a privilege, not a right.  Any lender is free to choose not to lend to you for any reason at all, just so long as it's not based on a protected characteristic (gender, sexuality, religious belief, etc.)