topic Re: Fairly ridiculous GEMB practice I discovered in Credit Cards

Fairly ridiculous GEMB practice I discovered

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:05:41 GMT

I'll try to make this fairly short but it's a word of warning to anyone who travels extensively out of the US (I am out of the country about 340 days a year, I live on the road).

Basically, don't apply for credit cards (especially with GEMB) online from a foreign IP address. What happened to me was I applied for an Amazon store card (provided by GE Money Bank) from my work laptop while in Dubai, using all my correct US address and information. Much to my surprised I was immediately declined (I haven't been declined for a credit card since I was starting college about a decade or more ago). They said I would receive an email (the electronic version of the ubiquitous denial letter I suppose) within 4 days.

Here is all the letter said:

"The request was judgmentally reviewed and denied for the following reason(s):

HIGH RISK SOURCE OF APPLICATION"

Okay fine, I figured this had to do with the Dubai IP. Well after a total of about 45 minutes on the phone (using various numbers including the Back Door numbers found here), I figure out yes, the application was immediately denied, i.e. not put under review, and all I can do is reapply in 30 days. Alright, I can live with that (although not happy). HOWEVER, they claimed that this denial will result in a hard credit pull! Are you kidding me? They never even ran my credit, just denied it immediately via a computer mismatch of IP addresses. How is this right?!

In any case, just a word of warning for those of you who travel for a living. I don't think I will be reapplying once I am in the US for this card and subjecting myself to another hard pull of my credit, despite the fact that I would undoubtedly be approved given my credit history.

Hopefully this helps someone else in the future.

Re: Fairly ridiculous GEMB practice I discovered

flowfaster — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:36:27 GMT

Have you tried calling in to explain your situation?

Re: Fairly ridiculous GEMB practice I discovered

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:43:06 GMT

Either way, you authorized them to access your credit. By hitting "submit" you gave them the okay to go ahead ahd pull your report.

Re: Fairly ridiculous GEMB practice I discovered

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:47:44 GMT

Just got off the phone with them 30 minutes ago. Not sure what else I can do, they say the application was flat rejected therefore not in the system for them to modify. Obviously I don't think they have any control on whether it hits my credit as a hard pull either, everything is so automated these days.

Unless you can suggest a number I haven't tried, I already tried the usual customer service number as well as the number in the back door numbers thread, and the number those people gave me for the verification department.

Not sure what else I can do.

Re: Fairly ridiculous GEMB practice I discovered

trumpet-205 — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:48:59 GMT

Do you know for sure it is a hard pull?

Re: Fairly ridiculous GEMB practice I discovered

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:50:10 GMT

No, you're right, I absolutely authorized them to pull my credit...my point is I don't think they even did pull my credit, they immediately rejected based on the IP address. To me, this is not an acceptable practice. Just telling my mortgage broker than I want to get a loan doesn't immediately hit my credit if he decides not to do business with me for whatever reason before he pulls a bureau inquiry.

The easy answer is just don't apply for credit cards from a foreign IP address. All I had to do was do a remote desktop to my computer at home and apply from there and it would have been fine.

Re: Fairly ridiculous GEMB practice I discovered

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:50:58 GMT

They were adamant that it was, but I admit until I pull a report I won't know 100% that it was a hard pull. They seemed pretty certain about it. I asked several times because I was pretty upset about it.

Re: Fairly ridiculous GEMB practice I discovered

trumpet-205 — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:51:37 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
No, you're right, I absolutely authorized them to pull my credit...my point is I don't think they even did pull my credit, they immediately rejected based on the IP address. To me, this is not an acceptable practice. Just telling my mortgage broker than I want to get a loan doesn't immediately hit my credit if he decides not to do business with me for whatever reason before he pulls a bureau inquiry.

The easy answer is just don't apply for credit cards from a foreign IP address. All I had to do was do a remote desktop to my computer at home and apply from there and it would have been fine.

A valuable lesson is learned.

Re: Fairly ridiculous GEMB practice I discovered

mikka1 — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:53:27 GMT

Hmm.. I had a somewhat similar experience with GEMB, but I never linked it to the fact I was using a foreign IP address.

Once I requested 2 AU cards to my JCP account when I was in a trip to Russia, and my access to the online banking was immediately blocked after that. I called the number on the card, but they told me nothing about IP addresses or anything, just asked me to verify 4-digits of my social and confirm the fact I actually ordered those cards. After that my access has been immediately restored.

Re: Fairly ridiculous GEMB practice I discovered

learnin113 — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:56:48 GMT

I agree with everything GE did here but I wish they would block you from applying via a non US IP address period to spare you the hard pull and the subsequent headache. Credit fraud from non US sources is a huge problem. I mean huge...so I'm glad of all the precautions they take...especially with Amazon when you dont even need the physical card to use the account.

Re: Fairly ridiculous GEMB practice I discovered

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 16:07:52 GMT

Maybe it's irresponsible of me to single out GEMB here, for all I know this is a standard practice in the industry.

I agree that I'd rather deal with a hard pull and the inconvenience than credit fraud, but frankly it just smacks of laziness on GEMB's part, they could have put the application in limbo pending verification (which I could easily have provided during my phone calls) instead of instantly rejecting. An account in review is no more usable to a fraudster than a fully rejected one.

Re: Fairly ridiculous GEMB practice I discovered

mikka1 — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 16:08:14 GMT

@learnin113 wrote:
I agree with everything GE did here but I wish they would block you from applying via a non US IP address period to spare you the hard pull and the subsequent headache. Credit fraud from non US sources is a huge problem. I mean huge...so I'm glad of all the precautions they take...especially with Amazon when you dont even need the physical card to use the account.

Frankly, I tend to disagree - with all those widely available technologies like masking proxy servers, publically available VPNs with addresses from almost any country of the world, let alone 'botnets' and 'trojan horses' letting someone falsely mask any requests like they are coming from your PC if it's infected, those limitations on IP addresses sometimes can create false sense of security, but in reality - just cause inconvenience for usual customers, like me or COMustang, who spend a lot of time abroad.

The bad thing is that some companies go too far in their 'security efforts' (probably their management doesn't even know about this), so that I can't, for example, even open a Target webpage when I'm in Russia from my home, if I'm not using any VPN. It just causes frustration and need to press one more button to launch a VPN connection, but I see absolutely no point in this from the pure security point of view.

That's just my IMHO, I might be wrong though.