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Last Friday I broke my New Year's resolution and applied for a Capital One card. I need a card with low/no foreign transaction fees, and this is the one that I ultimately chose.
Not surprisingly, Cap One did hard pulls from all 3 bureaus. However, on the same day, Amex, Citi, and Chase all did soft pulls on EX for account review purposes. I know that they do these occasionally, but for them to all occur on the same day, and on the day that I make my first CC application in over 2 years, is eeriely suspicious.
Has anyone else noticed this happening? Now I'm just waiting to get ratejacked or CLD'ed.
I'm not surprised by this, with technology being as advanced as it is and with the credit bureaus offering so many different products to those who purchase their services. They probably have a system set up when a person applies for new credit all others are notified via AR process. I saw a similar post when an individual went on an app spree and had all his cards CLD or Canceled after that app spree....What triggered it .....you guessed it AR soft pulls and his accounts were canceled.
I would look for more of this to happen in the future. Don't like it..but I believe a reality going forward.
Wow. Nice to know that big brother is watching over your shoulder.
As others have pointed out I suspect that the CRAs sell this as a service for a nice fee - "Hey CC Issuers - Worried about your cardholders ? We'll let you know when they app for other cards - in case you need to keep them on a short leash...."
Or my personal favorite - "Hey Collection Agencies - want to know when someone is about to purchase a home/car ? We'll let you know so that you can pounce on them as soon as that Mortgage App Hard Inquiry shows".
All the more reason to opt out with the CRAs. Not 100% but I'm guessing that would stop some of these things from happening....
I know that EX - and probably the other CRAs - offers a credit alerting service to businesses to let them know when a person applies for new credit. I naively thought that this would apply to just big credit applications, like mortgages and auto loans. It appears that I'm wrong. Interestingly, an auto loan application from last year didn't seem to generate any softs from these companies.
I have about $30,000 of CL on two Chase cards that is under-utilized (to the CCC, that is ). I wonder if that's going to get chopped.
The irritating thing is that I didn't get an immediate approval when I called. It stems from the fact that there's an extended fraud alert on EQ; I've had problems with instant approval in the past, so I was expecting it. I hoped that by calling, instead of going online, they'd be able to do whatever verification was required while I was on the phone. Didn't happen, so now I have to wait for a letter to arrive with further instructions.
Watchmann wrote:
Always keep one thing in mind, the credit agencies do not exist for you, they exist for credit providers. The market for the public is just a sideline for them to bring in some extra money to show you a minimal amount of data. They sell all kinds of custom designed products and if AMEX wants to be notified of all people living in Illinois whose last names begin with 'C' with FICO scores in the 650-750 range who apply for credit with card XYZ that can easily be provided. I'm not surprised at all. We live in a fishbowl and all of our financial lives are for sale. That's the price we pay for automated credit systems.