topic Re: PenFed Denied in Credit Cards

PenFed Denied

Anonymous — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 20:29:44 GMT

For short credit history.

I've got a perfect PIF history of 2 Years, 3 Months. 5% Utilization @ time of application. No mortgage or rental contract liabilities. Less than 10K in student loans. FICO score 741. Legit salary as a public accountant.

So essentially, I have excellent positive cash flow with few liabilities and expenses. My one and only CC for those two years had a credit line of $500 so obviously I was spending carefully.

WTF. Had to vent. Waste of an application and hard inquiry. Talk about conservative.

Re: PenFed Denied

Anonymous — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 20:35:30 GMT

Hi Wankel, sorry to hear about the denial.

Have you thought about trying to recon?

Re: PenFed Denied

Anonymous — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 20:39:19 GMT

Sorry to hear about the decline, but did you call to try for a recon?

ETA: Oops, I didn't see that FM had already replied by the time I hit enter.

Message Edited by LilMirth on 12-30-2008 12:39 PM

Re: PenFed Denied

score_building — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 17:11:32 GMT

if you poke around, many stories of seemingly similarly strong applications being denied outright. high util, short account history, more than 1 or 2 inqs on eq., recent baddies- any one of which can break the deal on an otherwise solid app.

had cc app denied for high uti (twentyish) 713 eq 21 year history 5 year aaoa, sl 60 days from about 5 years ago. may reapp. 10/09.

they reportedly consider an account "new" for up to 24 mnths OP app w/ 3 months of mature history and no other revolving credit history to bolster app. except a low limit card.

will likely be a stronger candidate at 3 yrs history but still do have a shot at recon as PP...if recon is a no go perhaps reapp in 6 months to a year...am sensitive to inqs. too but pen fed i think is worth it. think about it, cap1 for example, places 3 inqs per app., for what they offer.

once approved upon recon or reapp. can reap the benefits of the rigour of their underwriting. sure, some do get approved frst time around and that's great but there are many with good apps. who report initial denial and reapp (in fact multiple reapps until successful is not uncommon with pen fed) with a more fine tuned submission to an affirmative response.

Re: PenFed Denied

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 01:13:19 GMT

Same thing happened to me today..

Penfed VISA Platinum Cash Rewards Amount Requested : $5,000.

Status: REQUEST DENIED

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Equifax FICO : 783

Number of your accounts with a missed payment : 0 accounts

Your oldest account was opened : 21 Years, 6 Months ago

Average age of your accounts : 11 years

Ratio of your revolving balances to your credit limits : 1%

Total owed on revolving accounts : $13000 (Used a $20K 0% for 9months credit card check 3 months ago. Paid back $7,000 so far)

3 inquiries in the last 12 months

1) 12/13 - PenFed - New account

2) 12/02 - AMEX - Costco TrueEarnings Card

3) 07/10 - My local bank, refinance mortgage

I even got a few 20k 3years CD with them

Re: PenFed Denied

haulingthescoreup — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 01:16:21 GMT

Wow, they're tougher than ever!

You might want to read some of the threads about recon (reconsideration) and try again.

Re: PenFed Denied

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 02:43:42 GMT

Penfed reject here also.initial application, recon, car loan

eq- 723

util - 15%

Inq- 3

reason: pyramiditing "sp" debt

I've moved on and will try again in the future but not sweating it a bit

Re: PenFed Denied

score_building — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 17:13:42 GMT

can i ask how many accts. you opened in the past 2 years

@Anonymous wrote:
Penfed reject here also.initial application, recon, car loan

eq- 723
util - 15%
Inq- 3

reason: pyramiditing "sp" debt

I've moved on and will try again in the future but not sweating it a bit

Re: PenFed Denied

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 05:23:11 GMT

I had 5 new account within 2008. No baddies on EQ and they had the nerve to pull another hard for my recon which I disputed with EQ and they deleted the extra one.

Re: PenFed Denied

score_building — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 05:50:01 GMT

wtg! on the dupe inq removal, they need to stop with that since it is entirely unecessary and it is apparently not that common...they double inqed me too which really peeved me at the time. you are the second member that surprised me by saying you disputed an inq with eq., how?

i was under the impression inquiries cannot be disputed with a cra, only with the creditor- in general inqs can be harder to remove than baddies, how did you do it jahmal?

@Anonymous wrote:
I had 5 new account within 2008. No baddies on EQ and they had the nerve to pull another hard for my recon which I disputed with EQ and they deleted the extra one.

Re: PenFed Denied

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 14:03:17 GMT

@score_building wrote:
wtg! on the dupe inq removal, they need to stop with that since it is entirely unecessary and it is apparently not that common...they double inqed me too which really peeved me at the time. you are the second member that surprised me by saying you disputed an inq with eq., how?

i was under the impression inquiries cannot be disputed with a cra, only with the creditor- in general inqs can be harder to remove than baddies, how did you do it jahmal?

@Anonymous wrote:
I had 5 new account within 2008. No baddies on EQ and they had the nerve to pull another hard for my recon which I disputed with EQ and they deleted the extra one.

Hey Score_Building!

Apologies for the threadjack here, but just wanted to say that I've successfully disputed an inq on EQ before. I was very clueless about all things credit-related at the time, and I think it was the first time I'd pulled my full EQ report. I saw that I had two inqs from US Bank from when I opened my secured card with them - I guess one from when they received my application and another from when I called to check the status and the CSR said 'oh, we've just sent you a letter asking for some more information!' (they needed to check my identity) - she must have pulled another hard on EQ at the time, which ended up being either the same day or the day after (I forget) the first.

I think I actually printed a dispute letter from myFICO - I definitely did it by mail, anyway, just explaining that the two inqs were from one credit card application. I checked again maybe 3 weeks later, and the duplicate inq had been removed. Glad it all worked out so well, as I've since heard/read that disputing inqs can be a very bad idea. I was surprised mine turned out to so easy to remove.

Message Edited by fevmlo on 01-01-2009 09:03 AM

Re: PenFed Denied

score_building — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 17:14:46 GMT

Hi There fevmlo! Thanks for the info! i had no idea. i thought any of the 3 would thumb their noses at an inq. removal request (in the past, i tried with ex to no avail. they directed me to address my request to the creditor instead)

Re: PenFed Denied

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 21:39:42 GMT

That's OK. I won't lose any sleep over it. I joined PenFed mainly for the CD. I am happy with the 4.75% APR that I got. It dropped to 4% today.

Who knows, maybe after a few years, they might reconsider and give me a pre-approved CC....

Re: PenFed Denied

score_building — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 21:47:28 GMT

from the info. you shared it sounds like you'd be a shoe-in for recon. makes me wonder if nasa, jfcu and some of the other fairly highly touted cu's are a bit easier to get products from than pen fed.

Re: PenFed Denied

jmbfl — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 22:59:38 GMT

@score_building wrote:
from the info. you shared it sounds like you'd be a shoe-in for recon. makes me wonder if nasa, jfcu and some of the other fairly highly touted cu's are a bit easier to get products from than pen fed.

NASA = Three hard INQ's I believe.

JFCU = A mess! There is nothing easy about dealing with them. I would not app here as it is likely to be a huge waste of time.

PenFed never was easy. A rejection from them with five new accounts in the last year is an almost certainty. Like every one of the major national CU's they have a profile they want their applicants to fall into. If you do, great, it's a green light. If you don't you won't get a card. With PenFed there always is a reason - it just might not be the stated reason - or the stated reason might require interpretation. Pyramiding credit in PenFed-land generally means too many new accounts. They do not like any recent new accounts and are sensitve to recent inquiries. PenFed is also sensitve to (total available TL's)/(Income) and PenFed does not consider HHI for non-joint applicants. PenFed has tightened their credit standards recently in ways no one fully understands. They also have stopped reviewing accounts for auto-CLI's at the six month point. As tough as PenFed once was, they are now tougher!

Re: PenFed Denied

jaxstraw — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 23:15:29 GMT

NASA is definately three hards and does not like new credit in the last year also although there are some exceptions.

JFCU has been pulling all three on occasion lately and in my case asked for tax transcripts for proof of income. They wanted me to release my last two years of tax returns for a 5k card. I told them no, maybe for a 30-50k card but not 5k.

Re: PenFed Denied

jmbfl — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 23:22:30 GMT

@jaxstraw wrote:
NASA is definately three hards and does not like new credit in the last year also although there are some exceptions.
JFCU has been pulling all three on occasion lately and in my case asked for tax transcripts for proof of income. They wanted me to release my last two years of tax returns for a 5k card. I told them no, maybe for a 30-50k card but not 5k.

They are doing this - then taking many weeks to process the app - and then declining many applicants for real or not so real reasons! They used to be great, but that ended a long time ago.

Re: PenFed Denied

score_building — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 05:08:23 GMT

thanks Jax and jmbfl for shaing that nitty gritty cu f/b. i do appreciate the guidance. hoping to get in to a couple asap, i'll start w/ a pen fed reapp later this year, then go from there. woulda thought JFCU was still the creme de la creme if you hadn't posted with the skinny on them. guess nothing good lasts forever

Re: PenFed Denied

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 05:36:39 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
For short credit history.

@I've got a perfect PIF history of 2 Years, 3 Months. 5% Utilization @ time of application. No mortgage or rental contract liabilities. Less than 10K in student loans. FICO score 741. Legit salary as a public accountant.

So essentially, I have excellent positive cash flow with few liabilities and expenses. My one and only CC for those two years had a credit line of $500 so obviously I was spending carefully.

WTF. Had to vent. Waste of an application and hard inquiry. Talk about conservative.

I was very similar to you (actually a higher score) and I got denied too. I guess they don't like short histories.

Their official reason though was just "Limited credit experience." (Is that different from saying short history?)

Anyway, I'm not too bothered, right afterwards I applied with BoA for their 1.25% cash card and approved no problem. I'll probably wait a year and try PenFed again.

Message Edited by Jeff321 on 01-06-2009 11:36 PM

Re: PenFed Denied

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 18:17:35 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Same thing happened to me today..

Penfed VISA Platinum Cash Rewards Amount Requested : $5,000.
Status: REQUEST DENIED

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Equifax FICO : 783
Number of your accounts with a missed payment : 0 accounts
Your oldest account was opened : 21 Years, 6 Months ago
Average age of your accounts : 11 years
Ratio of your revolving balances to your credit limits : 1%
Total owed on revolving accounts : $13000 (Used a $20K 0% for 9months credit card check 3 months ago. Paid back $7,000 so far)

3 inquiries in the last 12 months
1) 12/13 - PenFed - New account
2) 12/02 - AMEX - Costco TrueEarnings Card
3) 07/10 - My local bank, refinance mortgage

I even got a few 20k 3years CD with them

After exactly 15 months, I finally got a pre-approved offer..