AMEX Denied...should I try again now?

[Anonymous]

Hey guys,


Back at the beginning of June I applied for AMEX's Blue Sky Preferred and Jet Blue a month afterwards and was declined for both due to :

• Your consumer credit bureau score from Experian is too low  (See below)
• High utilization of credit lines or insufficient utilization information (Experian) (have since paid off, and got limits increased for those cards)
  
• Number of trades (Experian) (maybe student loans?)
  

Those were the only two reasons it stated. I never called to do a recon. For the Jet Blue status it said "cancelled" and they didn't do a second inq.

They also stated :

• Length of time accounts have been established. 
• Proportion of revolving balances to revolving credit limits is too high. 
• Length of time revolving accounts have been established

I have since paid off or down all of the credit cards except for one (sears), so I think my situation is a little better in terms of balance / limit however when it stated Too many accounts with balances, I am worried that it is talking about my student loans that haven't gone back into repayment status...could this be affecting it?


As far as credit cards I have, here are the current balances :


    * Capital One - $200 balance / $500 Limit which was increased to $1500 automatically this month (after Amex app)
    * Paypal Plus - $150 balance / $2000 Limit which was increased to $3000 after pressing the increase button this month  (after app)(all in attempts to decrease util)
    * CU Card - $100 balance / $2000 Limit
    * Sears Mastercard $1,000 balance / $1800 Limit

When I applied, all of these balances were closer, if not at the credit limit.


Do you think by paying these balances I could try again since it has been a couple months now?  And if so, which card should I go for? Same as before or different? I'm not ruling out charge cards but I'd like to stay with the Blues in some way.


My scores before paying those down were TU: 680 EQ : 694 EX : 701...so I'd imagine by going from close to 89% Util to almost 15% the scores have gone up quite a bit, althought I'm not sure how much.  (also I have two inq falling off at the end of August..so I'm guessing I should wait until then). Just wanted to know if the "too many accounts" reason would still stand even though the UTIL has gone way down..and I could even get them lower if needed.


Any suggestions welcome!!! Thanks

[SevenNEW]

You could perhaps try and pull your scores, just to limit the guessing?

[Anonymous]

Yeah I think you're right, I do want to pull them all again, but I want to wait for those couple inqs' to fall off at the end of this month so I can get a more accurate number. 

Should I go for the same type of cards that I was declined for such as the Blue Sky Pref, or start out with a ZYNC or Green or Gold?

[haulingthescoreup]

Hi, welcome to the forums!

May I ask where you got your scores, especially your EX score? Experian has refused to let consumers buy our own EX FICO scores for several years now, so unless you got it from a mortgage lender or PSECU, it's probably not a FICO score. Experian sells you their own FAKO score, and they're not really upfront about this.

It's great that you've reduced your utilization so much, and that will definitely help your scores once the new balances report.

It looks like you still have balances reporting, and since one of your negatives was "too many accounts with balances", you might need to address that as well. If you wait until your statements post before paying (the understandable thing to do), the balance due is reported, even if you pay it off the next day. If you pay each off a few days before the next statement is due, they will report $0 on the statement and also to the bureaus.

It also looks like you might be sort of new to credit, especially in revolving credit, so that might be another problem, one which can only be cured by time.

But it's possible that simply reducing your util will have done the trick. I'd definitely try to get some more accounts reporting $0, though.

[Red1Blue]

Amex is very different and they use their own scoring model to approve their cards. I would say start with a charge card like Zync and start building history with them and as you build relationship grow into their credit cards. Amex loves long term relationships and pay in full customers.