Altering Credit Ratings

eth0_

Apolgies if this is in the wrong forum...

Basically I applied for credit to the value or 350 euro, through o2 with GE Capital bank today. Guy came back and said i'd been refused.

Now, I have an almost perfect credit rating....this is about the length of it:

In the past 4 years i've had:
A 1 year digifone contract (no defaults on payment)
A 2 year vodafone contract (no defaults)
Three Credit cards (2 late payments in the past three years with MBNA but that was more their fault for sending statement out late)
A 3500 euro Loan (paid back entirely, no probs)
A 500 pound hire purchase agreement through Dixons, no problems with that either.
Overdrafts with BOI and Ulsterbank (had a small prob with BOI where I had forgotten about a small overdraft there and they were sending letters about it to an old address but it's been resolved and cleared)
I earn a LOT more than the 16thousand min required to get credit, and I pay no rent, so I can't see any problems with me personally.

The thing is, I've lived for the past year in a house that had been rented for the past 5 years or so. And I know that people there before me had left without paying the last eircom bill, and we were even getting solicitors letters for some German girl who had left Germany oweing 5 grand to her bank. Even one of the guys who was living with me and left the same time as I did, left without paying the Eircom bill, and had been late paying it on other occasions.

I've mailed off an application to get my credit rating, but I want to know....has anyone had this problem before and did they manage to get round it, have things removed from the record?

Gordon

*shudder* I hate this kind of thing. Once tried to get a personal loan and for the wierdest reason it was refused. So I paid cash!

I'll put this in Business and Economy, it seems better suited to there.

Hope you work it out eth0_

sceptre

Don't know a great deal about this (luckily) - the links below might help though

http://www.oasis.gov.ie/personal_finance/irish_credit_bureau.html

http://www.dataprivacy.ie/2b.htm
(some case studies here (and info on how to correct your credit record) - should at least tell you something you didn't know)

I'd imagine you've fallen victim to the credit scoring system used by some insitutions. Works like car insurance - based on what they know about you in particular they put you into a particular grouping, then decide whether to lend to you or not.

eth0_

Thank you very much for that 2nd link, sceptre! Great info

dahamsta

Rather than starting a new thread...

I rang the ICB about getting my details a while back, they sent me out a standard application form, I filled it in and sent it back. A week or two later I got back a "Results Report", but all that was on it was a list of enquiries that had been made on my record, which happened to be just the one. I was under the impression I would get back data on my credit rating, is this all they're required to give me?

adam

eth0_

http://www.dataprivacy.ie/2bi.htm


That's what it SHOULD look like. I'm assuming you've had a loan/hire purchase etc in the past?

Credit card and overdrafts won't show on the record.

If I get mine back and it just shows who has enquired i'll be asking for my €6 back!

eth0_

Got my credit record today in the post (much faster that I expected!)

There's not ONE bad mark against me on it. The only real item of significance on it, is a record of a hire purchase agreement, and it was 000000 rating which means, no payment arrears.

They also included the last 4 companies to check my credit rating. And guess what? The company who I applied to last week for credit on that o2 phone....their name didn't appear! So they didn't even check my credit rating.

What's going on here?

Gordon

I think I know why my loan was refused when I went to buy that thing I eventually paid cash for. I think I have very good credit rating so they maybe felt that there would be no point in giving me the loan as I would pay it back in a lump without giving them their interest rates.

Maybe they thought that about you?

It could just be a glitch, can you apply again?

eth0_

Well, the thing o2 do for buying phones, there's no interest free period, you have to pay it off over 12 months at 22% interest.

It's odd. I'm going to apply again in a week or two
If they turn me down again, i'll *ahem* politely mention that I have my credit record, and that they made no enquiry about me.

maxheadroom

Originally posted by eth0_
So they didn't even check my credit rating.

What's going on here?

Hmmm - sounds lke they might have done some kind of credit pre-scoring? Did they ask you a bunch of questions like marital status, residential status, monthly/annual income, whether or not you have a credit card? (or get you to fill in a questionnaire?)

If you "fail" the pre-qualification segment, they won't even bother with your credit history.

ozpass

Although not directly pertinent to eth0_'s problem....

I applied for an AIB credit card a couple of months ago and was met with stony silence (they didn't refuse me per se but I never got the card despite sending completed forms).

A few weeks ago I transferred a savings account which was in my girlfriend's name into an identical account in both our names.

I repeated the CC application procedure and......hey presto! One shiny new AIB credit card.

Victor

Originally posted by ozpass
I applied for an AIB credit card a couple of months ago and was met with stony silence (they didn't refuse me per se but I never got the card despite sending completed forms).

Sounds like it got lost.

growler

you can just have too good a credit rating , if you pay everything back on time and don't look like you could run up massive interest repayments then the banks can't bleed you as dry as they would like so they reject you , simple as that.


sad but true