Useless credit limit

[spellman]

My wife applied for the Avios card (as I’ve got the Hilton version already), got approved based on her 40k income, and has been given a silly £200 credit limit. I’ve requested an increase but they denied it. Makes the card absolutely useless to us as we’ve no chance a £3k hitting the spending target to get the bonus AVios in three months.

[NorthernLass]

There are a few threads about this, many people seem to get this as a temporary limit until Barclays have verified certain details, e.g. income – have you gone through the BC section of this site?

[Jonathans]

My wife had the same thing. My wife and I earn the same amount, I provided tax returns, computations, bank statements the lot for her (they never asked for mine). I got £10k limit off the bat and she got £200 which they refused to increase it.

Anyway we managed to hit the spend target by making a £200 transaction. Pay the card off by bank transfer which should clear your account within 2 hours so you can spend another £200.

You obviously can’t use it for large transactions but if topping up something like Amazon, the process works albeit laborious.

[Andrew.]

spellman wrote:

My wife applied for the Avios card (as I’ve got the Hilton version already), got approved based on her 40k income, and has been given a silly £200 credit limit. I’ve requested an increase but they denied it. Makes the card absolutely useless to us as we’ve no chance a £3k hitting the spending target to get the bonus AVios in three months.

People should really think twice before posting this kind of content or engage in this kind of behaviour with the Financial Services industry.

Unless there is a formal POA in place, “I’ve requested an increase but they denied it.”, it has the potential to red-flag as an abusive and controlling relationship – which will only result in further checks.

[spellman]

Andrew. wrote:

People should really think twice before posting this kind of content or engage in this kind of behaviour with the Financial Services industry.

Unless there is a formal POA in place, “I’ve requested an increase but they denied it.”, it has the potential to red-flag as an abusive and controlling relationship – which will only result in further checks.

I manage all our finances and my wife couldn’t care less on how the AVios that pays for her business class flights are earned so leaves all the credit card churning to me, but I appreciate that it some circumstances it could be a very different situation, athough I doubt such a person would be advertising that on a public forum!

[JDB]

@spellman the previous poster, @Andrew. was spot on. It is an issue that people do actually explicitly post about here, saying they make applications for and using a partner’s card without express authorisation and in breach of card terms. I believe it was a reason for many Creation closures.

You say “I manage all our finances” which may be fine up to a point, but in my professional experience this can quickly go wrong and in relationship breakdowns (either caused by or leading to the build up of debts) it gets painted as controlling or coercive behaviour and one party denies they ever incurred the debts and says they are also not matrimonial debts. It gets horrendously messy when the evidence emerges. It is very unwise of people to do this in such a casual way and some aspects may even be unlawful.

I find the general idea that “I manage all the finances” rather disrespectful to one’s partner if it is literal. We do a bit of both and I greatly value my wife’s input (she is miles cleverer) as while she isn’t all that interested, a fresh pair of eyes often spots important issues I hadn’t noticed.

[spellman]

JDB wrote:

@spellman the previous poster, @Andrew. was spot on. It is an issue that people do actually explicitly post about here, saying they make applications for and using a partner’s card without express authorisation

Getting off topic, but this is HFP afterall…I never said I applied without her knowledge or authorisation. She’s always kept informed as the named account holder and she then authorises me with whichever company it is to act on her behalf going forward. There is nothing illegal about that, and perfectly within the terms of the card(s) in question.

JDB wrote:

You say “I manage all our finances” which may be fine up to a point

It is fine for our relationship. We have a joint current account, join CC accounts. She has full visibility of everything, but chooses to let me manage which product(s) we use and apply for, and our monthly budgets. Again, I would imagine this is pretty typical in an established long term relationship..one partner usually takes control of the finances and budgeting.

JDB wrote:

It is very unwise of people to do this in such a casual way and some aspects may even be unlawful.

Every relationship is different. What works for some wouldn’t work for others. If my wife ever decided she did care about whether we should earn Virgin points or Avios, I’d happily hand over the credit card selection process to her!

JDB wrote:

I find the general idea that “I manage all the finances” rather disrespectful to one’s partner if it is literal. We do a bit of both and I greatly value my wife’s input (she is miles cleverer) as while she isn’t all that interested, a fresh pair of eyes often spots important issues I hadn’t noticed.

I don’t disagree with you when done in a controlling manner, although you’re making an assumption based of an off-hand comment. My wife would be horrified if I suggested she takes over the management of our finances and investments etc and it just wouldn’t be a good use of her time at all.

[JDB]

@spellman I never said you did! I said “people” and many here do explicitly make unfortunate statements.

All these things are, as you say quite normal, but you would be amazed how the ‘facts’ get spun when things go wrong, even when people have joint accounts so theoretically had full transparency. Having some record of joint decisions or things you have been asked to do for the other can save a huge amount of aggro.

[Rob]

But back to the point …. £200 is the holding limit you get until you supply the income verification docs you were asked to supply. Send those and you get your £10k, £20k whatever.

[spellman]

Rob Burgess wrote:

But back to the point …. £200 is the holding limit you get until you supply the income verification docs you were asked to supply. Send those and you get your £10k, £20k whatever.

Nope.

We sent all the docs requested. Credit limit remained unchanged. Cancelled the card now.

[Gary_Dexter]

spellman wrote:

Rob Burgess wrote:

But back to the point …. £200 is the holding limit you get until you supply the income verification docs you were asked to supply. Send those and you get your £10k, £20k whatever.

Nope.

We sent all the docs requested. Credit limit remained unchanged. Cancelled the card now.

Did they confirm back to you that they won’t be increasing it?

[spellman]

Gary_Dexter wrote:

spellman wrote:

Rob Burgess wrote:

But back to the point …. £200 is the holding limit you get until you supply the income verification docs you were asked to supply. Send those and you get your £10k, £20k whatever.

Nope.

We sent all the docs requested. Credit limit remained unchanged. Cancelled the card now.

Did they confirm back to you that they won’t be increasing it?

Yup. My only course of action was to log a complaint

[aseftel]

According to the summary box the minimum initial credit limit on the card is just £50 so count yourself lucky!

[MNDltd]

Mine was set at £200 also, took a while and lots of too-ing and fro-ing with various documents to get it increased to a usable level.

[HughR]

Jonathans wrote:

My wife had the same thing. My wife and I earn the same amount, I provided tax returns, computations, bank statements the lot for her (they never asked for mine). I got £10k limit off the bat and she got £200 which they refused to increase it.

Anyway we managed to hit the spend target by making a £200 transaction. Pay the card off by bank transfer which should clear your account within 2 hours so you can spend another £200.

You obviously can’t use it for large transactions but if topping up something like Amazon, the process works albeit laborious.

I am in a similar situation. Can I just check that taking this approach, any additional spend over what would have been the credit limit still generates Avios points as well as counting towards the target spend? I remember ages ago reading that this approach did not generate points, but that might have been with a different credit card!

[can]

In our case, the self-employed Player 2 was given a £200 limit as well. She sent her tax returns. They said they cannot accept them (why?). She resent twice or thrice more, the same response. She gave up and received an email, they cancelled the card 🙂

Apart from the obvious sexist bias, I was wondering if their model includes a “household credit limit”. My card has a healtyish limit.
All these stories are about couples where the first applicant gets a good enough limit, whereas the Player 2 gets a low one.

[QFFlyer]

can wrote:

In our case, the self-employed Player 2 was given a £200 limit as well. She sent her tax returns. They said they cannot accept them (why?). She resent twice or thrice more, the same response. She gave up and received an email, they cancelled the card 🙂

Apart from the obvious sexist bias, I was wondering if their model includes a “household credit limit”. My card has a healtyish limit.
All these stories are about couples where the first applicant gets a good enough limit, whereas the Player 2 gets a low one.

I don’t know obviously for sure, but doesn’t feel like it from our perspective – I was an existing Premier customer, but have a Hilton card with a £12k limit.

My OH wasn’t a Barclays customer at all (although has had Barclaycards in the past) – £20k limit off the bat and approved for Premier instantly. So go figure, I have no idea what their criteria is, but we somehow met it, which is fine by us. Just a shame I can’t get the card, but (despite having the US Hilton Aspire Amex) I can’t bring myself to give up the Hilton Barclaycard, just in case!