Help

Midgie

I've been in a lot of debt over the last couple of years (£12000) but I've slowly got myself out if it and now I've only got one debt to go (£3300)!

But I'm a bit worried - I always thought my credit rating was pretty good because I always paid my debts on time.

I did have a problem with my Egg Card where I went over the limit a couple of times - I wasn't paying enough attention and didn't realise - stupid I know!

Anyway, I was wanting to balance transfer my Virgin credit cards to a 0% card and applied for a Capital One about 6 months ago - they knocked me back!

When I phoned up to find out why they were kind of vague but the lady said it was probably because I had so much credit available.

I checked Experian and Equifax and both showed no problems (both rated me as excellent with no missed or late payments). I've since paid off a credit card and two loans (both early) but I still have an outstanding balance on my Virgin card (they've just upped the interest rate to 29.4%) that I'm working on paying off! Another 3 months and I should be done!

I'd like to transfer this to a 0% card but I'm worried about getting knocked back again - what do you think? Is it worth the risk?

I checked my Experian and Equifax credit score today

Experian - 999
Equifax -525

Thanks
Midgie

YorkshireBoy

Have you reduced your available credit by closing unused cards, and are these cards marked as settled with the CRA's?

Did you purchase your scores directly with the CRA's, or through an intermediary such as checkmyfile.co.uk?

Midgie

I got both scores direct from cra's themselves!

The loans are both marked settled!

The only things not are my Virgin card (Limit of £5100 - balance of £3300)
Egg card (Limit of £1000 - balance of £0)


I didn't want to close my Egg card just in case no one else would give me a credit card and I was stuck with a 29.9% Virgin card!

YorkshireBoy

Wouldn't it make sense to shift £1,000 (or just under, say £900) from Virgin to Egg as a matter of urgency? Unless of course Egg's APR is higher? Egg (assuming the Egg Card [Visa]) shouldn't charge you a BT fee as long as you aren't in a special promotion at the moment).

Capital One are known to be picky, so that might explain the rejection there.

Assuming there are no '1's on your credit file from Egg, I'd say chance another application.

I'm of the opinion that the 'scores' are largely worthless, but such a discrepancy (999 vs 525) might be worthy of further investigation...assuming they're both out of 1,000? Have you noticed any difference in 'content' on each of these reports?

Midgie

I don't think the Equifax score is out of 1,000 - it just says on the screen that anything over 475 is excellent. Maybe somebody else knows?

The rest of the report states that everything is excellent apart from the active acccounts bit which is a good! I don't think settling that last loan has registered yet so that might improve it a bit!

I'm hoping to get a flat at some point in the next year and I've been to scared to do anything in case I make things worse and then can't get a mortgage.