@Anonymous wrote:
So I've been arduously working to restore my credit for the past 6-8 months, and I'm at a point where I finally got my credit into the 700 territory. I've been in the garden when it comes to apps since I was approved for a capital one card in January with a measly $500 limit (has since stepped up to $750) because at that point, I was maxed out across the board and my scores were in the low 600s. I had a lot of errors on my report due to a mixed file, so that's how I was able to rebound into the 700s so quickly.
I just applied for an Amex Delta card and got the pending review message. I called in the recon line, and was informed that my application was declined due to:
1. Serious delinquency
2. Proportion of loan balances to loan amounts is too high
3. Too few accounts currently paid as agreed
4. Time since delinquency is too recent or unknown
Now, my last late payment showing on my credit file is from January 2017, a 30 day late. The only other negative item on my credit report a 60 day late to Macy's in December 2016, as I had a payment returned and promptly replaced, for their stupid $2.00 minimum finance charge after I paid off the account.
Now, I do have student loans that are significantly over the original loan amounts as they were deferred for a number of years (and they are private student loans). I'm paying them as much as I can every month, but one of them is almost at $6,000 over the original amount and the other two are at about $1500 over the original amount each. Before I even tried to get a credit card with my new higher FICO stores, I looked into refinancing those loans so that I can wipe out the high amounts above the original loan amounts and have one consolidated payment, but SoFi and every other "check your rate" soft-pull refi application I've done has rejected me due to the original loan to balance ratio being too high.
In any case, I'm pretty bummed out that I couldn't get the Delta card from Amex as I've seen folks here approved while in the 650+ range, and I'm on a Delta flight at least 2x a month for work (and I have to cover my travel expenses up front and then get reimbursed, so this card would have been a nice compliment to my usual spend). I also attempted chase sapphire preferred and got the same rejection reasons :-/. I guess back into the garden I go until I significantly pay down these loans so that they are below 80% of the original loan amounts. It will be a while.....
Just for data points, I have the following cards:
USAA card with a $500 limit reported at $0 balance,
$2900 NFCU card reporting at $184,
$1200 DiscoverIT secured (well past 7 months, no graduation, I assume for these same reasons) reporting $14
$100 Macy's Card reporting $0
$750 Capital One reporting $0
I see why it's a bummer. You did amazing work so far and getting above 700 FICO score is something to be proud of.
Just FYI, don't sweat the student loans. I am in the same boat and finally go the AMEX Delta card with a $1000 limit a few months ago. My only AMEX. I still had the loan issue but a few of my lates had aged off. I did have a few recent lates on my student loans (2 years ago) but that didn't seem to matter. I think some of the lates on the CCs aging off was the key in my case. The only lates on CCs I had when I got approved were about 5 years ago.
