I moved from Denmark to the UK last year to take up work, so I'm not terribly familiar with British financial tradition (or even terminology). Please bear with me if the following are stupid questions. When I moved, I kept the Visa card I have from my Danish bank. It works, but the overhead in exchanging sterling for Danish kroner and shipping them across the North Sea began bothering me. Also, an seemingly increasing number of online merchants refuse to accept credit cards issued by a non-UK financial institution. (Why, o why? Last time I bought a flight ticket, the British Airways webshop refused my card, and I had to go to a bricks-and-mortar place and pay a £15 surcharge). So I went to the bank that receives my salary here and asked to have some plastic attached to my account. This bank is apparently still stuck in the 20th century and think that "credit" rather than "card" is the operative word, and hence they thought that I was asking to borrow money rather than just to have a way to spend online the money I already have. So they wanted to do a credit check, and eventually turned me down. They offered the following wondrously vacuous explanation: | We have been unable to grant your request at this time, principally | because your application did not pass our credit score. The credit | scoring system allocates points for each piece of relevant | information and adds these up to produce a score. When your score | reaches a certain level then we will generally agree your | application. If your score does not reach this leve, we may not. and then added insult to injury by concluding, | If there is additional information that supports your request that | we did not take into account in assessing your application, you may | contact us within 21 days, and ask us to reconsider our decision. but *without* telling me which information they *did* take into account, thereby effectively preventing me from noticing what might have been missing. The bank has been...

This is standard UK practice. Financial insttitutions are very secretive about revaling how they arrive at the credit score. They claim this is because if the scoring sytem were known people would know how to make fraudulent applications. I have to say I can see their point. Experian are one of, if not the biggest, credit reference agencies in the UK. The 2 fee is the standard charge set by law. The fee is non refundable. Experian only collate data about individuals but do not actually produce credit scores. One of the factors is the Electoral Register. I would suggest getting your employer to talk to your bank. Even better if you use the same bank as your employer since they may be ablke to bring influemce to bear.

Bad credit, why?

Aug 05, 2004 81 Replies

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Tim 21 years ago

"Alex" wrote

Actually, **no limit** - if "there wasn't a law stopping them", then the 10 limit wouldn't exist either!

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Peter Crosland 21 years ago

It certainly is important. Stability of residence and proof of address are two significant factors when considering a credit application.

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