Hi
Just a quick question out of interest more than anything.
Im sure there are people out there who like myself have gambled on credit cards. Also like most i expected my credit rating to be rock bottom. However when i log into money supermarket or clear score or experian my credit rating is excellent, and companies are falling over themselves to offer credit.
Am i naive? Looking at the positives and negatives to a lender-
Positives:
(1) A charge to deposit money from a credit card
(2) Any introductory offers (0% etc) are invalid once you do this and you begin to pay interest
(3) Loads of activity on the account
(4) And of course in 99 percent of cases we are only ever paying the minimum amount due every month and so the account is open longer
Negatives-
(1) Chances of IVA or DMP which mean the lender may not get back the full balance or interest owed
(2) Awful money management
As i say this has never negatively effected me- in fact i have a crddit card with a very well known lender with a £2500 limit. They wrote to me the other day and upped the limit to £18000!!!!. Why??
Another murky undercurrent of how gamblers are exploited in my opinion.
Just a thought i wanted to share
Just because they'd like to wave £18k at you, doesn't mean you have to accept it. You could ditch the card, or write to them explaining why the limit should be whatever the present balance is.
It might be tempting, it might almost be justifiable to blow the limit and then blame the card provider for their undoubtedly stupidity and greed. But would doing that really help you or your recovery?
I hope you make some sensible and mature choices about how to handle this situation.
Stay safe,
CW
I havent accepted it i closed the account down, i was just using this as an example of how easy it is to get credit even if you have a bad history with gambling on credit.
But would all other recovering addicts be the same?? Or would this just be too much of a temptation.
Hi pal, good to hear you are now winning and certainly fighting back.
I have around the same sort of debt level altho only 2 cards. As i say i was very surprised at how easy it was for me to get more credit. Maybe the only difference between me and you is i havent gone down the road of a DMP
Hi Colt,
I did all of my gambling on credit card, running up thousands of pounds of debt! No positives there! However I never failed to make the monthly repayments, nor did I miss any mortgage payments. So I suppose still holding a good credit score is the only good thing to come out of it! The only Cc I hold now is from a joint account. There's too much credit available, scary really. With the low interest rates on savings, the big companies know money is to be made on people who are struggling with debt.
Actually I think gambling transactions should be banned on Cc's! Not sour grapes from me but if someone is gambling with money they haven't got! If they've got it use a debit card.
All the best.
Completely agree with your comment Shep72 that gambling transactions should be banned on credit cards! The only people gambling using credit cards are people with gambling problems so why allow it. It's something the credit card companies could easily do.
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