topic Re: First Post! Discover it Card in Credit Card Applications

First Post! Discover it Card

Anonymous — Wed, 25 Jan 2017 16:50:17 GMT

Greetings everyone. This is my first post here. I just joined today. I wish to get some feedback from some of you all on here. It seems this places is full of very knowledgeable members.

I applied for a Discover it student card and was denied. I received a letter from them stating it was due to a charge off in 2013. Before I continue, here is the story of the charge off:

I had an auto loan with Capitol One Auto Finance at 3.9% interest. Back then credit score was about 731 (ish). Sadly, I had to go through some cancer treatment and was discharged from the military due to my health. I withdrew what I had in my retirement funds in order to pay off the small amount of debt I had and to make it through the next several months before I found a job. I withdrew $16k and paid off $4k in credit card and student loan debt. I did not pay off my $22k car loan. Turns out there was an error in the way in which H&R Block filed this on my taxes and I was charged a $10,*** fine by the IRS. So that took all of the money I had and even after I finally found a job, and I was going to school full time, I was still struggline to make ends meet because of having been fined by the IRS. So we continued to pay the care and on CHristmas day some a-hole decided to get drunk and go drunk driving in peoples front lawns, while we were spending Christmas with my wife's family in San Antonio. The car was totalled, so we were told. It was a 2012 Hyundai Veracruz. The police knew who the vehicle belonged to and a witness had seen the owner's teenage boy driving the vehicle. When the police showed up to their door, the man claimed his son was in Mexico even though someone had just seen him wreck my car. The next day the father reported the car stolen. He claimed he always left his doors unlocked and keys in the ignition. Long story short, a few months later the body shop tells my insurance company that the car is actually not totalled because the 2012 Veracruz does not have a frame and in order for it to be totalled, there has to be frame damage. So then I get a call from Cap One saying that I am now 3 months behind. I had used the money I saved from the car payment to go out and buy a used, cheap car to get me by. At this point my whole experience had just been too traumatic and I would not be able to catch up on the car payments so I voluntarily surrended the car. It is listed by Captiol One as a charge off.

Fast forward to 2017: I am a survivor. I have pushed forward with life and and moving closer towards success. I am about to finish my undergrad at the University of Oregon in 4 months and start law school this fall. My credit score was affected but not as bad as I thought it would be. The denial letter Discover sent me has my FICO score at 664. Earlier this month I applied for and was approved for the AMEX blue cash card. I have been using that for everything and paying it daily. I have a 100% on time payment history on my credit karma. I have never given a late payment before on anything. My captiol one account does not show as late payments. I simply got hit hard with life and some jack*** and got set back a bit. But I am a responsible consumer. I understand credit. I really didn't put myself in the situation that I am in, or at least I like to think that I didn't.

After doing some research I read that there is a reconsideration number one can call and have them take a second look at an application. I saw some amazing success stories with these numbers. I called the number this morning and was told by the CSR that they do not do recon's and that I would need to apply again. I don't feel the need to apply again if I was just denied last week. Could it be possible that some reps don't know about recons? Or could it be that the recon number has changed? Or is it that Discover truly does not do recons?

Worse comes to worst, I will continue to use my AMEX card as I am doing right now and apply for an another card in 6 months after I increase my score a bit.

O and I left a 10% balance on the card for the statement closing date and then paid it off the next day. I will do this so they report a 10% utilization.

Currently I have no auto loan (thank heavens), 2 military credit cards which still show as open with $5700 CL and ) 0% utilization. I cannot use these anymore because I have to be active duty to do so. They just haven't been closed by the issuer yet. And I have student loans. This has dramatically affected my average account age. Every semester a new account appears on my credit and now my average account age has dropped from 10 years to exactly 3 years as of this month.

Thanks for reading. I know it's been lengthy.

Re: First Post! Discover it Card

AverageJoesCredit — Wed, 25 Jan 2017 17:37:13 GMT

Welcome to the forum. First and foremost, im glad you are in good health and thank you for serving. My sister served over 10 years but had to get out due to health issues so i understand. Looks like life really did through you a curve ball but looks like you are doing your best at finding that sweet spot.

I dont think Discover foes recons. Very glad you got you an Amex. I would just recommend to keep using that establish more credit history and maybe in 6 months try for the Discover It card, not necessarily the Student one. Your doing great i commend you and wish you all the best in life and in your credit history.

Re: First Post! Discover it Card

Anonymous — Wed, 25 Jan 2017 17:48:58 GMT

Thank you so much!

Re: First Post! Discover it Card

AverageJoesCredit — Wed, 25 Jan 2017 18:14:18 GMT

No worries, youll get great advice here. Your making lemonade out of life lemons is in inspiring and have no doubt youll do great with your credit journey. Wait til you read up on some posts from one of our resident never take no for an answer community leaders ,at least i hope she is lol, Pizza1 !. If her posts dont give one strength to not accept no on denials, theres no hope for any of us

Re: First Post! Discover it Card

JustBPatient — Wed, 25 Jan 2017 19:03:15 GMT

Welcome and congrats on the success so far!! As far as Discover goes, I would wait the 6 months as suggested and if you really want it then reapply. Im sure somewhere on here there are stories of successful recons for DCVR but when I tried to recon for a buddy of mine I didnt get anywhere and I was pretty persistent. Good luck!!

Re: First Post! Discover it Card

Anonymous — Wed, 25 Jan 2017 23:36:32 GMT

What do you guys think about getting the secured card?

Re: First Post! Discover it Card

Anonymous — Wed, 25 Jan 2017 23:57:28 GMT

If you don't currently have any installment loans on your credit report. I would try the SSL technique to get your scores up then apply. This does work, I tried it myself. My scores went up 30+ points just for doing this. The info is on this site. Good Luck

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Understanding-FICO-Scoring/Adding-an-installment-loan-the-Share-Secure-technique/td-p/4506756

Re: First Post! Discover it Card

AverageJoesCredit — Thu, 26 Jan 2017 00:30:14 GMT

Secured Discover is not a bad card to have, seems like they are graduating much earlier than before. If you want you can post your scores and other stats and i think you can get better advice. I finally got approved for Discover after 5 tries and had a bk7 reporting, though it finally fell off in december. The thing is Discover is fickle and no one really knows how they choose to give a card to. Heck before my approval, i was never even offered the secured card.

Re: First Post! Discover it Card

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Jan 2017 06:21:34 GMT

Yep

Re: First Post! Discover it Card

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Jan 2017 06:37:14 GMT

Personally, I would call again and ask for a reconsideration. Most of the time, you just need to find the right person.

Re: First Post! Discover it Card

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Jan 2017 07:01:34 GMT

Discover is not big on recon. Before there was a direct link to apply for their secured card the only thing they would typically do was tell you to get a co-signer or do a secured deposit. That wasn't even something they offer to everyone and you still had to meet certain criteria.

Now they the advertise and market their secured card for new credit and rebuilders that anyone can apply for, I believe they are less likely to reconsider your app.

Re: First Post! Discover it Card

Anonymous — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 04:19:18 GMT

Alright everyone, I thought I would get on here and update since that first post. Things have been going very well for me. Since starting to rebuild my credit in January I now have my AMEX blue cash every which has since tripled it's limit, I opened a NFCU cash rewards with a $15k limit, and also did get in touch with the recon line for discover. They did not approve the application but did use the app for their secured card instead. I only put $200 on it and am using it for a gas tank a month and thats it. All my cards have been paid in full. My TU fico is 710 (provided by discover) and my experian is 680 (provided by AMEX) but experian hasn't been updated since Janurary 15 so I wonder what it would be at now. At statement closing dates utilization has been at 6%. I'm pretty sure experian score will be higher next time it updates.

I realized that the car I told you guys about has not been what has affected me the most surprisingly. What i noticed is killing my score is average length of credit history. Since I started school again back in 2013, I have been pulling a subsidized student loan each term. Those loans are all new accounts and so I have around 17 different student loan accounts, which is helping my score, but at the same time has brought my 11 year average credit history lenght to 3 years and 1 month. Ouch! But nonetheless, I am not too worried about that. I am glad that after having turned in the car in 2014 I am able to be in the 700's for my actual FICO score.

Thanks for stopping by and reading. I have more I would like to write about but will start a new thread for that. Thanks to everyone for the warm and encouraging words.

Re: First Post! Discover it Card

Aduke1122 — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 18:39:53 GMT

Hey Op congrats on all of your success lately , I was going to recommend Usaa they have been very good to me during my rebuild , navy fed has not but I'm hoping they will soon one day warm up to me . Keep doing what your doing and congrats