Upper age limit for credit agency scores

elisthomas

Both aged 68 & 66. We have been married for 46yrs. Only had a mortgage (paid off) One joint credit card which we pay off in full every month - no other debts & £k100 in the bank
We decided we were going to update our kitchen so went to ikea - planned chose & even spoke to the kitchen fitters. The ‘ikeaperson’ mentioned 0% finance. No brainier to me because I would rather keep £k10 in the bank & just pay it off over 5 yrs (which comes out of our annual income)
Shocked to see Ikano bank refused us - I cannot understand it as we have no d by history & are ‘ghosts’ to banks. To me perfect customers to have. Why was we refused - our ages?
By the way - we out of principle will not buy a kitchen from ikea now

Mark_d

Have you checked your credit reports from the main credit reference agencies?  It is possible that there are errors (or worse).

Do you have ample disposable income to cover the load repayments as well as all your other living costs?

Buying on 0% finance does let you keep a high bank balance for longer, but if you bought the kitchen on credit card then you get reward points.  Personally I think it's 'cleaner' just to put the transaction on credit card.

I think you're making a mistake avoiding Ikea purely because their finance provider wouldn't give you a 0% loan.  It's more than likely everyone turns you own for a 0% loan, for the same reasons as Ikano bank.

CliveOfIndia

elisthomas said:

One joint credit card which we pay off in full every month

There's no such thing as a joint credit card.  One of you will be the account holder, the other will be a secondary cardholder.  The payment history relating to the card will only be registered on the account holder's credit file.

That may be the issue - lack of credit history.  If you've got little to no current or recent history, it's difficult for a lender to make an objective assessment of whether you meet their lending requirements.

elisthomas said:

£k100 in the bank

That's irrelevant to a lender.  It's not reported on your credit files, they have no visibility of your savings, and even if they did, savings are not taken into account when assessing credit applications (the theory being that you could go out and blow the lot tomorrow if you wanted to).

It's nothing personal - you simply don't meet their lending criteria.

Alderbank

You say  'I cannot understand it as we have no d by history & are ‘ghosts’ to banks. To me perfect customers to have.'

How are you perfect? To a finance house you sound like nightmare customers! 

A finance house likes to see evidence that you regularly buy stuff on credit and are a steady and reliable re-payer, no missing or late payments and no doubt paying the lenders bags of interest in the process.

I don't think it's age. I'm 10 years older than you and I don't have these problems.

silvercar

Being ghosts is the problem. The banks have no evidence that you can keep up repayments on loans. 

maxximus75

Depending on when the credit card was taken out, it may not even report if it was opened because ago.  Sometimes you can contact the credit card company and request them to report but they don’t have to.

In the UK there is no such thing as a joint credit card so even if it was reporting, it would only report to the main cardholders credit report and not the additional cardholder.

Once your mortgage was paid off, the history of the account would be removed from your reports after six years.

The problem is that to financial institutions searching your credit report, you do not have a financial history so they have no information to make a decision to lend to you.  They also have no idea on how much you have in the bank and even if they did, this can be spent at any time so has no basis.

So the reason would be that, to them, you have no history.

Whilst I understand the reasoning behind wanting to pay on finance, if you want the kitchen and obviously have the means to pay for it in savings, go for the kitchen you want.

IKEA or nobody else has it in for you and certainly not because of age…. 

You can always request each of your credit reports from Experian, Equifax and TransUnion from their respective websites - you can do this annually, free of charge.