@Anonymous wrote:My husband and I have been rebuilding for a few months, with some slow success - which I'll take. We've been wanting an AMEX with costco - we shop there quite a bit, and the annual fee actually goes to the cost of the membership for Costco.
I know his Experian FICO was 631 in November - from lender, not a FAKO. The only changes since then are,
*opened a Cap 1 - he had no major cc at the time, got it for the mix. $500 - crap rebuilder.
I know that drops the score a few point with the inquiry and new account.
He also had a bunch of baddies drop from his credit, some deleted, some expired, I think three. There are only three negatives left, which aren't going anywhere for the time being.
*car repo - unpaid
*charge off loan - paid
*lates on Macy's card - 4 30's - (been goodwilling the heck out of them) last one was 1 1/2yrs ago, on time since then.
Oh, and 6 inquirys, three this year, three last year.
What are our chances?
I've heard varying reports about how difficult the Costco Amex is to get. At the least, it seems to be one of Amex's "moderately" difficult cards to obtain. There were a rash of approvals in the fall of 2009 (myself included) ranging from completely clean to slightly sullied (me) credit history-- I have a string of six 30 day lates over 6 years old for one account (auto loan). I have no idea what my Experian score was at that time, but it had to be over 700 (TU & EQ were, and Exp tends to be my highest score). I recall that someone with a completely clean report, scores in 680-690 range was approved.
I think, with major derogs (especially unpaid) you'll not want to waste an INQ with Amex for any product. Especially so for their revolvers. The Zync approvals have been flowing in like water, to get people's foot in the door, but I think the unpaid repo might be the kiss of death even the most forgiving Amex product. 