The buggers keep trying to increase mine without asking. When I ask why the answer is "well mr moth, you clear your balance every month"

That's because it's rarely more than a grand you twats. I'd probably have a bit more difficulty clearing my present limit of £22000 every fucking month.

Financial services, run by grasping morons

1 - To do the credit score after the application stage requires YOUR permission

2 - For the credit reference agency to contact them unsolicited with sensitive personal information is in breach of the DPA UNLESS it's related to a CIFAS marker (credit industry fraud avoidance system - see below)

3 - Once you have credit with them they have no need whatsoever to do a periodical check.

4 - Your limit will usually only be modified according to internal behavioural scores, or company policy, or on request.


CIFAS markers are put in place if there are suggestions or indications you may be involved in or actively commiting fraud, or have been the victim. The markers differ and are specific, and you may not necessarily be told about them ever, depending on what kind it is. However if you are flagging up as a perp not a victim then the account would have been closed outright not cut in its limit, and you would expect that to be happening with your other credit outlets too - and anything new you applied for would probably be refused too.



Sounds to me like they're looking at all their middle-ground accounts i.e. those with safe and reasonable income but nothing special, but large exposure, and simply cropping the safe figures in order to justify sale of the bad debt book, and look better on the other side. So for example, we have £1bn owed to us and a potential of £2bn exposure. Bad debt is currently £100m. Therefore 10% of outright and 5% of possible. So crop back the potential to £1.2bn and it's a bigger percentage of the potential figure, which makes it a more justifiable proposition to shareholders then to sell the bad debt off at a loss to get shot of it. They then sell the bad debt book for around £65m, have a near 0% outstanding and limit the potential for bad debt to regenerate too quickly.

Chances are if you never use it, or clear the balance each month and pay no interest - and have behaved like this long term and throughout the economic downturn - that you make them next to nothing anyway so it's no big deal if you flounce to a competitor.

What they really want is customers who will start racking up that card to around £10-15k at which point if you appear to be spending it on day-to-day living they ride in like a knight in shining armour, move you to a fixed term unsecured loan, saving you £X per month yadda-yadda, so you either live within your means and become a more viable long term customer, or run up the small limit they let you keep once more and have 2 serviceable debts, one of which makes them extra on overlimit charges each month as a nice little side-bonus for them, but remains within their affordability calculations.

So in all likelihood the call centre monkey hadn't a clue and/or didn't understand the automated data trail left on the screens, and just fobbed you off. If you're REALLY keen, ask to speak with someone in the underwriting department, then ask to speak with a manager or team leader, explain you have a flawless credit report sat in front of you, and you didn't authorise them to check on you or the ref agency to share out information willy nilly, and so you'd appreciate an honest answer, even if it's just a simple company review of their exposure. You don't care, just want an honest answer... Should get something at least then. Most probably put through to complaints mind. Managers and team leaders don't like speaking to the unwashed masses. That's why they applied for those positions in the first place.

As for Moth's case, that's just automated behavioural scores doing periodical reviews. They see you maintain it well, and increase your potential, just in case one day you decide to buy a bloody great diamond ring for the mistress and stick it on the card. If you ask them to amend their system so that you are overlooked for automated increases, they should be able to do so. Certainly when I was a credit underwriter you could on what was a widely used system for card companies, and I wouldn't imagine recent updates would have engineered such things out as there's times they'd want to prevent them for their own purposes.

Originally Posted by Beckers

My other card has a £20k limit, neither have any debt on them

You win, I feel inadequate now

Only dangerous if you don't control your spending

You aren't wrong though. Even way back in the mists of time when my limit was about 12 shillings I never felt the need to max out my card.