topic Re: Stay away from NASA FCU and Penfed. in Personal Finance

Stay away from NASA FCU and Penfed.

Cleaningitup2016 — Tue, 26 Nov 2024 17:20:25 GMT

Applied for membership at NASA FCU and not only did I have to email them a copy of my social security card (which no bank/cu has ever asked before), they sent me a link to an app to "scan my face".

All these hoops to jump through just for them to tell me "information does not match".

Funny, I opened accounts at both Alliant and Credit Union 1 without issue.

They won't tell me what doesn't match, and their only "solution" is for me to drive to Maryland, 12 hours away.

PenFed...they denied me a savings account, yes just a savings account because my credit score was too low.

Re: Stay away from NASA FCU and Penfed.

FicoMike0 — Wed, 27 Nov 2024 01:13:34 GMT

Wow, just how low is your credit score?

I applied to penfed for a credit card and in the letter turning me down, they mentioned my credit score was 850. I have not reapplied, roflol. I still have a ssl with them through 2031, so I'm sorta stuck with them.

Re: Stay away from NASA FCU and Penfed.

IsambardPrince — Thu, 12 Dec 2024 09:38:16 GMT

@Cleaningitup2016 wrote:
Applied for membership at NASA FCU and not only did I have to email them a copy of my social security card (which no bank/cu has ever asked before), they sent me a link to an app to "scan my face".
All these hoops to jump through just for them to tell me "information does not match".
Funny, I opened accounts at both Alliant and Credit Union 1 without issue.
They won't tell me what doesn't match, and their only "solution" is for me to drive to Maryland, 12 hours away.

PenFed...they denied me a savings account, yes just a savings account because my credit score was too low.

American Express (Rewards Checking and HYSA) asked me to scan my face with an app and to show them a driver's license. I mean, it is a thing legitimate banks do sometimes.

Know Your Customer.

Bank of America and Wells Fargo sometimes make you come in and show them a passport or something.

Capital One told me there was no proof I existed, for bank accounts, but gave me close to $30,000 in available credit on credit cards.

Apparently I don't exist and I'm just a hologram.

Re: Stay away from NASA FCU and Penfed.

poet2013 — Fri, 13 Dec 2024 09:13:07 GMT

I feel more places are being more cautious due to increase fraud/charge offs since covid and all these data breaches. Also could be bad apples getting membership via backdoors like american consumer council leaving sour taste due verbally abusing staff etc.

You still may be able to redo app with different cell. I found my older cam worked better and got approved on retry with other banks/credit unions.

Penfed always been kinda conservative but was getting nicer until covid. They havent shown me love lately on their preapprovals like in the past.

Re: Stay away from NASA FCU and Penfed.

IsambardPrince — Fri, 13 Dec 2024 21:54:12 GMT

@poet2013 wrote:
I feel more places are being more cautious due to increase fraud/charge offs since covid and all these data breaches. Also could be bad apples getting membership via backdoors like american consumer council leaving sour taste due verbally abusing staff etc.

You still may be able to redo app with different cell. I found my older cam worked better and got approved on retry with other banks/credit unions.

Penfed always been kinda conservative but was getting nicer until covid. They havent shown me love lately on their preapprovals like in the past.

It's usually newer cameras that work better. iPhone cameras are usually middle of the pack at best. They look fine until you're looking at them on a computer monitor on a screen that doesn't smudge everything together to hide the flaws. Apple's Retina displays are designed to look good even if it's not an accurate representation of the image data.

Then, they use that ridiculous HEVC based imaging compression format, which is heavily patented and can't be losslessly converted to a format that people actually accept.

I'm heavily into Google products at this point because they have stability, security, ease of use, the latest features, and thank God Microsoft is finally dying like, "Eww, some people still use that?"

For many years Apple was the obvious "other" choice so they could get away with making decisions which ran counter to common sense.

Anyway, probably the banks don't like iPhones as much because their imaging is less accurate than higher end Android phones. There was that whole "All Asian women can unlock the phone." facial recognition Apple had a few years back. They tend to ship things that don't really work.

When you see a photo someone uploads to social media and all the fine detail is lost, they're using an iPhone, and likely the front facing camera.

Re: Stay away from NASA FCU and Penfed.

Patient957 — Fri, 13 Dec 2024 22:30:13 GMT

@FicoMike0 wrote:
Wow, just how low is your credit score?
I applied to penfed for a credit card and in the letter turning me down, they mentioned my credit score was 850. I have not reapplied, roflol. I still have a ssl with them through 2031, so I'm sorta stuck with them.

Wait, what? You were denied a PenFed credit card with an 850 score?

Re: Stay away from NASA FCU and Penfed.

IsambardPrince — Sat, 14 Dec 2024 04:37:12 GMT

@Patient957 wrote:
@FicoMike0 wrote:
Wow, just how low is your credit score?
I applied to penfed for a credit card and in the letter turning me down, they mentioned my credit score was 850. I have not reapplied, roflol. I still have a ssl with them through 2031, so I'm sorta stuck with them.
Wait, what? You were denied a PenFed credit card with an 850 score?

You can be denied credit cards with super high FICO scores, sure. I was denied for a few when mine was over 800.

The bank considers other factors, including debt to income ratio, and even possibly things that aren't scored by FICO, like inquiries that are over 12 months old but haven't fallen off the report yet.

From what I can tell, declines for high FICO scores are getting more rampant at banks like Capital One for things like the Venture X for "too many credit cards", like, they don't think you'll put enough spend on their card to be worth doing business with you. "We're not going to compete with all that."

Re: Stay away from NASA FCU and Penfed.

salt_water_swimming — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 08:21:47 GMT

The NASA thing sounds like a name mismatch, maybe from a middle initial or multiple last names? My wife went through something similar

But yes I also see signs of financial institutions ramping up their security and verification. Not a bad thing in principle but very inconvenient and inconsistent for customers.

Re: Stay away from NASA FCU and Penfed.

MarkintheHV — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 08:33:48 GMT

@IsambardPrince wrote:From what I can tell, declines for high FICO scores are getting more rampant at banks like Capital One for things like the Venture X for "too many credit cards", like, they don't think you'll put enough spend on their card to be worth doing business with you. "We're not going to compete with all that."

I can never get a prequal for Venture X, always says no. I gave up on them.

Re: Stay away from NASA FCU and Penfed.

IsambardPrince — Fri, 20 Dec 2024 01:55:04 GMT

@MarkintheHV wrote:
@IsambardPrince wrote:From what I can tell, declines for high FICO scores are getting more rampant at banks like Capital One for things like the Venture X for "too many credit cards", like, they don't think you'll put enough spend on their card to be worth doing business with you. "We're not going to compete with all that."
I can never get a prequal for Venture X, always says no. I gave up on them.

They prequalified my spouse for Venture X with a huge welcome offer (770s and 780s on FICO 8) and they prequalified me (FICOs in the 680s and 690s due to an older bankruptcy) but in my case they said accepting would require proof of income and a smaller welcome offer.

If one of us gets one, it'll be him and I can be AU. There's a minimum spending limit of $10,000 on that card but it's an expensive card to carry so you want to frontload the larger welcome offer. That'll set them back on potentially turning your account profitable for them by a couple years.