How’s your credit score? Almost certainly it’s nowhere near as good as you imagine.

Since the credit crunch started, everyone’s has been knocked down a level. Those who once had excellent scores now get the products that people with just good ones now get, those with good scores get now get “ok to poor” products and if you’ve a poor score , forget it.

And with credit scores playing an ever bigger role in getting a mortgage, credit card, loan or even contract mobile phone, it’s never been more important to manage yours.

You need credit to build credit One of the best strategies to create or rebuild your credit score has always been to get a credit card, even at a hideous interest rate, and use it responsibly.

This means spending a little on it each month and, crucially, always repaying in full each month so you don’t pay any interest. This way, your file shows you can be trusted with any new lending.

But there’s a problem. How do you get a card in the middle of a credit crunch, so that you can start improving your credit score?

To try and square this circle, a host of “bad credit scorer” cards have appeared.

We could call them credit reject cards, if you like. They’ve been designed quite deliberately to manage the market for people who can’t get credit.

Now let me make this doubly clear, even though the card providers would love you to, you shouldn’t be using these for borrowing, their interest rates are abdominal. This is only a tactical move to improve your score.

The Best Rejects Cards Which card is available depends on how poor your credit history is. With all the credit cards, ensure you set up a direct debit to repay it in full each month or the interest will cost large.

Overall winner - but tough to get The recently launched Capital One Progress starts off giving a nasty APR of 34.9%. However, make your payments on time and this rate drops by 5% roughly every six months. After one-and-a-half years, you’ll pay 19.9% APR.

So even if you can’t get other new credit, if you’ve seen all your interest rates hiked up, at least you’ll be able to shift even more expensive debts to this by no means good, but at least not nightmarish, 19.9%.

Now here’s the rub. This Capital One card is described as being for people with good credit scores. Why on earth would they want it? Well it proves how difficult getting new credit is that even those with good credit scores can’t.

Admittedly good is their term; I’d say it’s for OK scorers. You can’t get it if you’ve ever had an official default notice or County Court Judgment (CCJ) against you, but a few missed payments or going beyond your limit is fine.

Worse credit history If you’ve had defaults, there are some cards to try such as Barclaycard’s Initial at 27.9% APR, if you’ve had CCJs too, there’s Capital One’s Classic at 34.9% or the Aqua Card at 35.9%.

Again, let me reiterate, these cards are purely a mechanism for improving your score. And don’t apply for all of them together, as every additional search can have an impact on your score.

The last resort If ever these monster rate cards reject you - and it happens – don’t worry, there’s still hope. The Cashplus Creditbuilder pre-paid card costs £5 and, as you can’t borrow on it, you just pre-load it to spend, there’s no credit check, so anybody can get it.

The clever bit is that unlike other pre-paid cards you can voluntarily opt to pay a fee of £4.95 a month on it credit-builder option. This is then structured so that technically they are lending you the money.

As long as you pay it every month for a year, the information will be passed to the credit reference agency Experian as if you had successfully borrowed.

Of course, it will cost you £60, and there’s no guarantee that at the end you’ll end up with Duncan Bannatyne’s credit score.

Though it should have some impact, maybe even just enough to allow you to get one of the cards above and keep rebuilding.

How much to spend on these cards. Don’t feel the need to spend too much; £50 a month should be fine. Once you successfully get one, it can be worth trying to get a second and spending £50 on that two, as it should improve your score even more.

The amount isn’t crucial, it’s more the fact that you are successfully managing two cards.

Yet NEVER, ever, ever miss a monthly payment. If you do, all your good work will be undone and you could find yourself in a worse position than you were when you started.

Further Top Credit Score Tips There are few hard and fast rules, as each lender scores you differently, but the following will usually help.

* Check files after rejection. Don’t apply for anything else until you’ve asked for your credit file and checked it for errors. If the reason for rejection is there’s an error on your file, and you keep applying, even once the error’s corrected you may find you’re still being rejected because of the number of searches.

* Ensure you’re on the electoral roll. This is the single most important thing. If you are not on there, it’s unlikely you’ll get any credit. So call up your council and check. If you’re not eligible to vote because you are a foreign national, send all the credit reference agencies proof of residency and ask them to add a note to your file.

* Check your addresses. Ensure all your outstanding accounts have the correct address and details for you. You’d be surprised at what’s on your file. You could have an old mobile phone contract that you no longer use that’s still technically active and registered to an old address, reducing you’re ability to get credit.

This is just the tip of the iceberg; for a detailed guide on improving your credit rating and how to check for free, see my full step-by-step guide at www.moneysavingexpert.com/creditrating