If you're wanting to get a Kay Store Card, here's what I did and it seemed to work. I hope it helps other people!
I applied online and got the "We couldn't make an instant decision. We'll mail you in 20 days." I'm thinking of course, the one card I really want I am denied for. These are the steps I took:
I called their customer care number at: 800-527-8029 and asked to speak to someone dealing with current account holders. When the CSR came on, I told her the website instantly approved me, but it didn't give me a credit limit or any information at all and was hoping she could help so I could get a gift. She seemed kind of confused and asked a lot of questions, so be prepared to stick to your story. Then she asked for my social to look up my application that I had applied for online and put me on hold for about 5 minutes. When she came back on the phone, she said "We weren't able to verify your employment information." She tells me to take a current utility bill, paystub and my drivers license into a Kay store within 30 days. So I went in today with all the documents. I told the girl at the counter the situation and that "I was approved by customer service pending document verification." So she took the papers back to her computer and came back and said she couldn't find my application. Well, she asked for my social to look up my application / profile with Kay. A nervous 5 minutes later she came back and said "You're approved for $500.00. If you're looking at getting something today that is a little bit more, I can probably get them to budge on the credit limit." I was pretty excited in my head. I told her I just wanted to get a gift card for Mother's Day coming up for $100.00. I have heard this is a good way to keep activity going on your account while not really buying anything since you can pay your store credit card with the gift card. Long story short, here's my advice and others please post YOUR success stories:
Don't be afraid to call! Call and ask what's up. Don't be afraid to change things around where you might get the right person to approve you (i.e. telling them you got an approval screen when you didn't could make the difference between Sour Sarah telling you No and Happy Hank telling you just to go into a store with a few papers and call it good. Be persistant when calling customer care that they contact someone about your "online approval"(wink wink) so you can get some answers on what's really going on.
I walked in with three peices of paper and out with a $500 credit line 
My EQ score at the time couldn't have been more than 550. I am an AU on a 20 year old Chase card with a 20,000 limit...but depending on what model is used...Equifax REFUSES to acknowledge AUs so I don't know if that played a part or not. I know that my AU accounts show up on their Equifax.com website, but not on myfico.com. I don't have a recent score from here, but from Equifax.com it was around 530 when applying. I also had several disputes going with Equifax which dropped me to 490 according to their website. EX and TU scores are much better. EQ has just been hell for me.
Anyhow, please post up and questions or success stories! Maybe we can make an offical "Store Card Approval Tip" sticky and include things like this along with the shopping cart tricks.
Brandon
Congratulations.
Interesting the wording you chose when calling to speak to a customer service rep. Glad the outcome was a positive one. 