Is it possible to have a credit rating that's too good?

retired_princesspouty · 09-12-2007, 01:54 PM

Financial Institutions do not have "double standards" in the way you mean it. They have profiles outlining who they will lend to and who they won't. It is their prerogative to do so.

They are in the business to make money, and if you're a customer who will not make them money they will not be interested. Their credit scoring system is a neccessity for the banks... it protects them from bad debt - they simply can't treat everyone the same. In most cases this actually helps the customer and the bank (people with good credit histories get better rates for example - the alternative is that everyone pays for those who default!).

In the last few years customers have become more canny in terms of credit cards, thanks to people like Martin Lewis. They exploit the credit card system and competitive market and the profits of the institutions has dropped as a result. They have combatted this by creating a profile for those people who are likely to expoit their system. In Rocky's case he's matched that profile and this girl he knows - for some reason - has not (there's no way of knowing what caused this).

so it's not double-standards - it's just the way it is.

retired_katie14 · 09-12-2007, 01:55 PM

Was something in the news a while ago about the likes of Lloyds going to start charging customers who don’t use their credit cards to stop people basically using them for free.

Wouldn’t surprise me if more credit cards start introducing annual fees.

retired_princesspouty · 09-12-2007, 01:57 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Herman Bloom:
Even more baffled. Why are they charging £5.99 for something that apparently they send through the post for £2?

You can only get your credit history. There's no such thing as a generic credit score.

Please read the article I linked to above

Again - everything you need to know about credit history

retired_dschultz · 09-12-2007, 01:57 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Herman Bloom:
Even more baffled. Why are they charging £5.99 for something that apparently they send through the post for £2?

Your actualy credit score out of 1000 will not appear on your credit report you get through the post.

That just has all the details of your accounts etc.

trotamundos · 09-12-2007, 01:58 PM

Aha, OK, gotcha :thup:

Ventil · 09-12-2007, 02:00 PM

Also most lenders are now putting in little addenda for those who are balance transferring such as an 1% off debt "processing fee" which just gets added to you debt.
So you may well be interest free for 6 months, but you've just had more money added to your debt, so in theory you could actually be worse off than you were before!

retired_princesspouty · 09-12-2007, 02:00 PM

From that article ffs:

Quote:

Buy your ‘credit score/rating'. Regardless of how they sell it, this is just a rough estimate of your generalised credit profile; usually based on just one agency's data. It can be useful though in highlighting credit history flaws.

While earlier I said, “there's no such thing as a credit rating”, actually around 30% of lenders do use an agency's ‘rating' as a part of their scoring process. This feeds into their own application form data, past dealings and other info, to build their final credit score.

So there is some merit, but it's quite woolly. Remember every lender scores you differently; the ‘rating' is just one stat and never the be-all and end-all; especially if you've had an existing relationship with the bank.