Hey everyone,
Posting for the first time but I've been lurking around for a while. As has been mentioned by numerous people before me, everyone here has been an invaluable resource in helping me get to the point I'm at right now.
A little bit about myself now.
I have a relatively new credit history, 1 year and 8 months to be exact. I had started with a secured BofA VISA credit card with a $500 limit ($300 security deposit) back in April of 2015. Currently, it had been PC'd into a regular CC and my limit had been increased to $2000 by BofA
So far I havent had a late payment and no derogs of any sort and I try to keep the util to less than 20%
I had the following inqs:
3 in EX (1 BofA, 2 Orange County Credit Union) - All expiring in April, 2017
1 in TU - Expiring in June, 2018
2 in EQ - 1 Expiring in Jan, 2017 and the other expiring in Aug, 2017
Credit Scores were in the range of 751 - 781 for all 3 CRAs (781 EX, 769 EQ, 751 TU). I had no other credit except for the $2000 BofA Visa card and util was at 12% ($236/$2000).
Annual income: 86K (plus roughly 6K in bonuses this year) currently, expected to increase to 96K in the next 3 months. I put the latter figure in all 3 of my applications.
The biggest issue I had upto this point was that whenever I would try to get my credit report through annualreport.com or try to sign up with Mint.com, CreditSesame.com or any of the CRAs online, no one was able to verify my identity. I had the same issue back in April, 2015 at Orange County Credit Union when I tried getting an auto loan, I was told that my information couldn't be verified. (The pull they made does show up in EX funnily enough)
Finally, somehow I was able to open an account on CreditKarma and through that was able to get my scores and inq information for TU and EQ.
Apparently, since my brother and I had lived at the same address and had the same last and first names, something went haywire with the CRA info. Not sure how common this is but I'm currently trying to get this resolved. Now, TU and EX are able to verify my identity.
I had wanted to start earning points/rewards for my purchases, so figured that now would be a good time to apply but was very hesitant because I was afraid I'd be denied again for the same reasons above and would incur an inq for nothing in return.
Coincidentally, received an offer in email from BofA for a Travel Rewards card and a PRG from Amex in mail the same day and thought what the hell might as well test my luck.
Applied for BofA cc online first, got insta approved for 3K to my surprise, as they had declined my CLI req back in April, 2016. (they had increased it a week later by themselves though)
Thought might as well apply for Amex as well. Applied online and was taken to their 'need more information' screen. They needed to verify my address and SSN.
At this point I found out that PRG was a charge card so I thought might as well apply for CSP as well while I'm at it.
Applied for CSP and was shown the message that they were reviewing my information and will get back to me if they needed further information.
All 3 apps had pulled my EX report, increasing the hard inqs to 6 - Score fell from 781 to 754 for EX
Next day called the recon numbers for Chase, they asked me for my SSN and address information and said the application has been approved already! 15K limit! (I had to ask twice cause i couldn't believe it the first time). Still couldn't believe it so called the automated number and was given the same info. I still can't believe it tbh.
Called Amex right afterwards, was asked to verify my address and SSN and got approved (apparently this is a NSPL card) and they even expedited the cc shipment when I told them I just had a baby! (though I was to find out later that if you ask amex,chase etc. they will expedite the shipment for no extra charge). Still kudos to the rep, she was super nice.
Thought might as well call BofA recon as well and see if anything could be done about the 3K limit, told them not to do another hard pull, told them I only banked with them, told them to look at my payment history and my record, told them Chase (who i don't bank with) just approved me for theirr CSP with a 15K limit but no go. Analyst said there's nothing they could do, so I hung up.
Anyway, to go from a 2K no rewards cc to 3 reward cards in 1 day. I'm super stoked!
TLDR; applied for 3 CCs (CSP, BofA Travel and Amex PRG) and got approved for all of them!
