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After 30 years of not using credit, I applied in mid October for the Capital One Walmart card but they just gave me the fallback store card that isn't a MasterCard. It came with a $300 limit. Wanting the same 5% back from Amazon, I later applied for their store card from Synchrony but was instantly denied. I called to see if I could convince them to give it to me but the guy immediately started repeating "six months!". I figure I better get a secured card to help my situation so acquired the Discover secured with a $200 deposit. Last week, I decided to try my luck with Petal as they look at your bank accounts and mine look fine and was approved for $750. Petal card hasn't even arrived and it's not on the report Chase pulled. A few weeks ago, I had asked here for advice on getting the Chase Amazon card and it was suggested that I wait up to a year. The more I thought about it, it made more sense to just try as the worst it could do is make me wait a year that I'm already doing. I applied a few days ago and was instantly rejected. I called them today and basically told them that I had been with Chase since they acquired Washington Mutual in 2008 and have never once had an overdraft. That I wanted to shift some of my spending to Amazon but it was hard to do if I was getting 5% back at Walmart but not Amazon. I'm disabled so my only income is 22k gross in SSI. Net just went up to 1699/mo. She asked me how much was non-taxable and I said all of it because it's just SSI. She asked how much I paid in rent or mortgage and I told her $608 with $392 in HOA fees but she was more focused on the $608. 1000 is deducted from checking so I didn't wanted them to think I was lying by just mentioning $608. She then asked why I hadn't had credit for so long and explained that I decided to do without it after being in a tough spot 30 years ago after a divorce. That I'm much older and wiser now and this kind of stuff will never happen to me again. This all took place over about a half hour as she put me on hold to do the application in which I'm sure she was consulting her boss. She then came back on told she was approved for $500. Every month, I take what is left over after I pay all my bills and move it into savings. I've only been able to do that in the recent past and now have 8k there. I think my great decades old checking account records and me having a savings account with them is what convinced them to trust me. Hope this helps anyone in a similar situation and sorry if it's too long.
For reference, this was what was on the original rejection...
Our decision was based on the following reason(s)
Not enough accounts opened long enough to establish a credit history
Total available credit on credit cards is too low
Average age of credit cards is too short
Unable to verify information on one or more accounts
Oh, and I don't even have a FICO score yet but Vantage Score for Transunion and Equifax shot up from zero to about 680 right away after establishing credit. It took a little dip after the hard pull but is already recovering.
No clue what that was about. One of the first things I did was go down the list of reasons and said "Yep, that's right" for the ones that were accurate and mentioned my Petal approval for total available credit reason. For the unable to verify line, I said that I'd be more than happy to help with any info she needed but she didn't ask. She only later asked about income and taxable amount and what I paid for housing.
Nice work being persistent! Congrats!
Congrats and good recon.
Congrats and Happy New Year!