Comenity closed all my accounts

[Anonymous]

A week ago I registered my Labrador puppy on AKC and got a pre-approval pop-up. Couldn't resist even though I knew better from reading the forum. Approved instantly for $6k. Yesterday I woke up to a bunch of alerts from MYFICO and Experian. Comenity had closed all my accounts. I had 3 store cards and the AKC approval. I had a balance (statement hadn't cut yet) on O'stock of $185. I was able to log on and pay that. The only thing I'm not sure about is it charged my AKC registration to the Visa upon approval ($55) the card actually came in the mail later yesterday after I was notified that it was cancelled. I'm not sure how to pay the money I owe on that. 

I know this has been talked about a lot on the forums, but just wanted to share. So far I haven't seen a score change anywhere. I'm not that upset about it, other than the AKC Visa sig that I planned to use for a surgery that my dog needs. I really hate the way Comenity does business, so I know I'm better off without them. I sent my paperwork in for NFCU. I hope to start out with them in the next few weeks.

[Anonymous]

Very sorry to hear about that - I hope you get approved quickly with NFCU. I think it's a good idea for anyone to keep their exposure with Synchrony or Comenity to only the stores they regularly shop at and the CL's they need; I'm beginning to get the hunch that the so-called shopping cart trick's days are numbered.

I do wonder, though, what were your CL's on those three existing Comenity cards? One factor that comes up a lot, though there are exceptions, when accounts are mass-closed like that is that the cards all or mostly had big credit lines on them, as in 5 figures, and that the account holders had been very active with CLI requests and other ways of getting their lines boosted.

EDIT: It's possible that if you call the Comenity "backdoor" number (there's a thread elsewhere listing all those phone numbers) and ask for a recon, you might be able to get at least one of those accounts reinstated.

[Anonymous]

Overstock - $3500

Williams sonoma - $700

Jcrew - $300

Those were all opening CL's. I opened these store cards all together a couple months ago, SCT. I'm sure that the multiple new accounts spooked them. I just don't like the way the shut everything down with no dialogue. They obviously don't have to approve anyone for anything, but once they have paying customers on board I think there should be some level of customer service. 

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Overstock - $3500

Williams sonoma - $700

Jcrew - $300

Those were all opening CL's. I opened these store cards all together a couple months ago, SCT. I'm sure that the multiple new accounts spooked them. I just don't like the way the shut everything down with no dialogue. They obviously don't have to approve anyone for anything, but once they have paying customers on board I think there should be some level of customer service. 

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I suspect you're right, which just backs up my hunch that Comenity may be fixing to lower the boom on the SCT in the not-so-distant future.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Joe8185, I guess we'll see what they do to fix the loophole that they created! The irony is, they set this up to prompt people to make impulse decisions when they were checking out on a store website. And it works! Now they obviously don't like the results. 

Anyway, I may try your suggestion on the recon for 1 account. Even though I hate to even be involved with them, I wasted a HP on that "pre-approved visa signature" so I gues it's worth a phone call to try a recon on that. 

[Anonymous]

I think you've hit the nail on the head. IIRC, Synchrony as well as Comenity had the SCT loophole back a few years ago, but Synchrony appears to have closed it for just this exact reason; they were trying to get people to apply for their cards on impulse, but then they ended up with a lot of people exploiting the facility to get scads of cards many of which ended up never being used and/or inflated to preposterously large credit lines for the sake of increasing amount of available credit/lowering utilization to boost people's scores.  Maybe Comenity is getting wise as well, so if that happens, I suspect we'll start to see posts later this year asking "what happened to the SCT? I can't get it to come up anymore no matter what I try!"

Anyway, good luck on the recon!

[MrsCHX]

It seems that the issue isn't opening *A* card with SCT. People who see swift AA from Comenity have generally opened multiple cards using SCT in a short window of time.

Sorry OP :/

[Anonymous]

MrsCHX,

That seems to be the case. I called the backdoor "customer relations" number and had a pointless conversation with them. She said it looks to them like fraud when they see multiple inquiries. I told her that the only reason I have so many (15) is because I had to buy 2 cars in the last year (one was totalled in a wreck, so I had to replace it) and I didn't realize at the time that the dealership applies to 7 or 8 banks to find the best deal... I said I can verify that there was no fraud.  She put me on hold and came back and said the new reason is "too many new accounts". She said that they review new accts AFTER they are approved. I get it if that's their UW criteria, but IMO they should not approve people that they don't want as customers. It's my fault for using the SCT too many times. I hope it doesn't lead to AA with other banks. 

[Anonymous]

That sounds off-kilter to me too. I wonder if they might give other people in the same situation who call them a similar runaround before finally admitting that the real reason they shut them down is too many new accounts. I'm rather glad now that 90% of the stores in the SCT basket don't sell things I'm interested in, so that I was never seriously tempted...honestly, the only two Comenity cards I'm seriously interested in are Paypal Credit and Overstock, and I'd probably pick Paypal over Overstock if I were told to choose. Same deal for Synchrony; I was interested in Care Credit for a while until I heard all the complaints about it, so now the only other Sync card I'd really consider aside from Amazon (which I already have) is Walmart, because I shop there at least once a month and often more.

[AverageJoesCredit]

This is one of my biggest credit pet peeves in the credit world when a creditor approves someone and shut them down even before they recieve their card. At least this happened before you were knee deep into big credit lines with them. Its come to that point if i see Comenity as the card issuer , ill be like ok, dont need it. Not a great way to inspire consumer affection