Effect of the credit crunch

[Deleted User]

Just got refused on a capital one balance transfer card, and got offered a Halifax one card for a mere limit of 4800 (I bank with halifax and hold over 40K of shares in their sharedeal account, on their overdraft page they say they will allow me a 10K overdraft but I only have 1000 and never use it). I had a halifax card 2 years ago with a 15K limit.

I checked two of the my credit checks before recently applying, experian and call both squeaky clean. I have a mortgage of 90K which is about 60% LTV, age 25, single, work for the government and earn 32k/year as an analyst.

I have a M+S card (over a year ago my last search) that I stoozed travellers cheques of at 1% charge with a balance of 5.2K on a 12K card. I dont own the egg card (obvious stoozing sign) I wanted to BT it to continue my stooze. Now im going to be paying off a bit of it and transfering what i can on the halifax card with the measly limit.

Conclusion its going to be very difficult time for a lot of people!!! Be very very careful avoid building up debt if possible, its very hard to get credit now and it aint going to be cheap! Id suggest rate tarts try and get a good loan or low long life of balance card.

Anybody else having difficulty continuing stoozing/rate tarting? :eek:

carguy

It's a hard time to get credit.... even credit cards. People are defaulting on their CCs like never before and the CC companies are getting a little picky about who they accept.
My tip... work on paying them off as fast as you can

Bismarck

do you think that will mean that the CC companies will be looking at the limits they have outstanding on their "well-behaving" customers as well or are they just going to hit them with higher rates when they feel like it? Just wondering if the crunch will affect the card shufflers as much as the new applicants? anyone any thoughts?

Maxtout

Yes I agree there is a clamp down.

I have been reducing my debt and the cost of it by shuffling debts between existing cards but MBNA recently reduced my credit limits on two cards they provide after I BT'd around 7k onto them. When I asked why they said it was because of my total outstanding debt to which I replied has been going down. I do not miss payments. Keep in mind that I had an available balance of 8.3k on my Goldfish card and they did not shut me down. MBNA's motive is the promotion they having going with loans dot co dot uk. They are reducing some customers credit limits, upping the interest rates and trying to force customers into taking out a loan.

Despite a clean credit profile I have also been turned down for a 0% card recently. The Virgin card is provided by MBNA so no surprise to be declined there but I have also tried a low APR life of balance card with Barclays so fingers crossed on that one although I am not holding my breath. If I get it MBNA can then kiss my !!!!.

Bismarck

you do wonder about the thoughts elsewhere about closing down cards with zero balances when this happens don't you? I've a couple of clear cards with nothing on them that are there just in case I need to transfer to them at the end of an offer ...OK I'm not looking for new credit at the moment but I'm also not looking to get hit by the silly 20% rates that some cc people want to hit you with if they can...I'd suggest people keeping their options open - if they can keep their spare cards locked away etc....

danthemoneysavingman

Yant1 wrote: »

Just got refused on a capital one balance transfer card, and got offered a Halifax one card for a mere limit of 4800 (I bank with halifax and hold over 40K of shares in their sharedeal account, on their overdraft page they say they will allow me a 10K overdraft but I only have 1000 and never use it).

Hi, I would've thought they would reconsider your credit limit if you point these facts out to them - certainly worth an ask. Especially as its with same company!

[Deleted User]

Thanks dan, ill give it a crack and hopefully theyll raise it to cover my stooze

exel1966

Your personal wealth (40K of shares) is irrelevant when assessing your application as CRA's/Creditors DO NOT have access to that kind of information.

I'd put your 'mere' limit down to the fact that they think you already have enough available credit in £27K and £15K of that already being with the Halifax.

[Deleted User]

I only have 1K of credit with halifax in the form of an overdraft which is unused and one 12K M+S card which is only half used. Thats about 13k available on my credit file, no missed payments ever.

The 15k credit card from halifax was closed down 2 years ago, that was also at a time when my mortgage was higher, ive overpayed a lot since then. I put it down to the credit crunch and thus banks needing to be harsher now, they are also less liquid and cant afford to loan out money. Fully understand that halifax card services are completely seperate from savings and stock divisions and the decision is made by computer soley by an algorithm based on my credit file

This post is mainly a word of warning that its going to be tougher to get better deals, ive certainly noticed it in a big way, never thought i would ever get rejected. Ps am also electoral role registered too.

YorkshireBoy

Yant, I'm not posting this to make you feel bad, but just to say my experience with Halifax is exactly the opposite to yours.

A couple of weeks ago I was wondering where my next (slow) stooz was going to come from, and then I noticed that Halifax, whom I have a (although not my main) current account with, had placed an offer of a credit card on my account online area.

Out of curiosity, mainly because I'd only closed a £6K card with them 6 weeks previously, I rang them to be told the offer was GUARANTEED. "Oh yes", I thought, "I've heard about these guaranteed offers!"

How wrong was I! They gave me a £10K 15 month purchase card with no external credit search, ie based purely on my account conduct/throughput. What have I done on the account throughput? Well, all I've done is fund the account with £1K a month (for the 6.17% AER rate), and routed many 10's of thousands of pounds of stooz money through there to my Sainsbury's stooz pot.

Credit crunch? What credit crunch?

[Deleted User]

That makes my situation a bit odd then as my high int current account sees ~2.5K a month as I put my rental income (from my spare rooms) in it as well. I didnt count the rental income in the application, as i didnt think i would need to. I also applyed for a card being logged in to the internet banking. I didnt realise that they didnt do a search if your already with them. But I suppose your situation may be better then mine in terms of what their system values as important, perhaps like insurance postcode etc might count

Hopefully theyll see sense when I ring them. :beer:

Although I guess unlike you I dont have any halifax saving accounts at teh moment, maybe this is important to.