I have been working gaining a Capital One Venture card for several weeks and decided to see if someone else can help me to make sense of this situation. I applied with Capital One online and was rejected, then over the phone with an operator, both times for a Capital One Venture Card. (I am about to begin a lot of travelling and decided the 2X miles feature would be useful).
I was denied, received two letters both of which stated: "Based on the credit report from one or more of the following agencies for My Name, income is insufficient for requested credit." My first action was to download copies of all three credit reports and thoroughly review them for any potential problem areas and I found only one, my address was not updated on the Equifax file. (I called Equifax about this matter, their intelligent response was that they only documented what was reported and that until a new address was reported by my creditors it could not be changed, ok, um - makes perfect sense to me.)
I am very confused as I did NOT request a specific credit limit and my declared income was over $150K/year. The back of the letter listed a credit score of 780 from Experian. The letter also stated "Key factors that adversely affected your credit score" and followed with four reasons, they are as follows: "Time since most recent account opening is too short", "Too many inquiries in the past 12 months", "Proportion of loan balances to loan amounts is too high", and "Too many accounts recently opened". I might point out that none of these have anything to do with my income level and all are easily explained and have already impacted my credit score adversely as my credit score was 801 about a year ago.
Not that I have to explain myself but everything stated in the credit report as negatives are all true, and there are several reasons. In the pas 9 months I have purchased 2 automobiles on credit, my daughter has added another semester of college debt with me as co-signer, I have sold my primary home, purchased another primary home, and am currently refinancing the new home purchase (having to refinance a brand new loan is long story - summary is that we originally got a bridge loan as we intended to build, but building has been put off due to favorable happenings with my work situation.) The loan balance situation is accurate since the two autos and home are all new loans and sitting near the credit limits.
Enough with the bad, I am 50 years old, I have a 26 year credit history with no late payments, ever. My income to debt ratio is around 14% of my gross, including home and auto loans. I have a very favorable cash position, and also multiple 401K accounts to back that up.
I called Capital One and received the typical call center person reading a script, requested a supervisor and spoke to Suzanne, who agreed with me that their denial did not make sense. We were on the phone for quite a while and she made several attempts to resolve while I waited, but eventually she decided to pass this to their back office and promised to get back with me in a couple of days (she did not offer/give a last name or contact information nor did she provide me with her ID number). About a week later I called back and went through another first level call center person to reach a supervisor named Peggy. Peggy did provide me with her ID number, and was equally agreeable that the denial was not obvious and she too has sent email into their back office for the underwriters to respond and promised to call me back within a couple of days.
In the meantime, I have applied for and received a Barclay Arrival Mastercard with an initial $5000 limit, that I have activated and started using.
What I am seeking from this forum is any advice for dealing with Capital One to get them to provide a valid reason behind their denial - which I plan to continue to dispute for as long as they continue to deny me credit (I feel like I am now on a mission where failure is not an option).
Here is more data for those so inclined:
FICO® score ingredients from MyFICO website:
Your history of paying bills on time. Great
Your total amount of outstanding debt. Very Good
How long you've had credit. Great
Amount of credit you've recently obtained or applied for. Bad
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