One of my favorite CLI rejection letters from Synchrony.

[Anonymous]

In cleaning up some papers, I found an old rejection letter from Synchrony. Could not figure out why I kept it, until I read the key factors section which listed four reasons:

• Lack of Real Estate Secured Loan Information (made sense as the place we were living is owned outright.
• Too many revolving accounts with high balance compared to credit limits.
• Balances on bankcards are too high compared with credit limits.
• Too many bankcards with high balance compared to credit limit.

Reminded me of the old adventure game:

You are in a maze of little twisty passages all different.

You are in a maze of different little twisty passages.

You are in a maze of little different twisty passages.

It felt like the needed 4 reasons and they only had two, so they just improvised. :-)

[K-in-Boston]

While the last three seem to be the same, they are actually for entirely different reasons.  Keep in mind that is not necessarily why you were declined, but rather the negative reason codes returned for your score.

#2 means that of ALL revolving accounts, there are too many with individual high utilization.  #3 means that segregating out only your bank cards (not including other revolving accounts), the aggregate utilization  is too high.  #4 means that segregating out only your bank cards (not including other revolving accounts), there are too many with individual high utilization.

Had you only had high balances on store cards, HELOCs, PLOCs, CLOCs,  etc., you would not have received reasons 3 and 4 and likely would have received other reason codes.  At the time your score was generated, those were the 4 factors causing the most scoring penalty.

[Anonymous]

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@K-in-Boston wrote:

While the last three seem to be the same, they are actually for entirely different reasons.  Keep in mind that is not necessarily why you were declined, but rather the negative reason codes returned for your score.

...snip...

Had you only had high balances on store cards, HELOCs, PLOCs, CLOCs,  etc., you would not have received reasons 3 and 4 and likely would have received other reason codes.  At the time your score was generated, those were the 4 factors causing the most scoring penalty.

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I figured they had different meanings, but since he only had bank cards, they really just say the same thing. :-)

P.S. Thanks for the specific explanation as to what they meant. It really is a great example as to why people hate this process. While I did not know what they would have meant in most circumstances, I would have known how to look them up (if I did not know they had to be all the same in his case). Most people would have just assumed they were the same and incomprehensible.

[Anonymous]

"You are in a maze of twisty passages,  all alike." 

😂😂❤❤

[financialfreedom777]

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@Anonymous wrote:

In cleaning up some papers, I found an old rejection letter from Synchrony. Could not figure out why I kept it, until I read the key factors section which listed four reasons:

• Lack of Real Estate Secured Loan Information (made sense as the place we were living is owned outright.
• Too many revolving accounts with high balance compared to credit limits.
• Balances on bankcards are too high compared with credit limits.
• Too many bankcards with high balance compared to credit limit.

Reminded me of the old adventure game:

You are in a maze of little twisty passages all different.

You are in a maze of different little twisty passages.

You are in a maze of little different twisty passages.

It felt like the needed 4 reasons and they only had two, so they just improvised. :-)

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LMAO! I just got a Synchrony CLI rejection for my Children's Place card and here is what they said:

• Lack of real estate secured loan information

• No open bankcards in your credit file. (True dat - gonna apply for the OpenSky)

• Delinquent or derogatory account

• Average time since revolving accounts opened is too recent

Weird thing is, had the card since Jan but THEY are the ones that auto-increased my card by $100 in March. Nothing has changed since... except the pandemic.

[UpperNwGuy]

Why do people focus so intently on the reason codes?  The important thing is the rejection, not the reason codes listed.  The reason codes are boilerplate written by lawyers and usually do not precisely fit your individual situation.

[Remedios]

I dunno about that..we are given two examples here and they fit perfectly

First one ended up with AA by a different lender for those precise reasons

Second example ..no mortgage is not a problem on otherwise solid profile, but with more troubling ones, lenders use it as indicator of stability

Based on scores, obviously there are derogs, only one store card, probably recently opened.

I'm all for looking at reason codes, because they do tell a story, even if it's one we don't like. 

[Curious_George2]

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@UpperNwGuy wrote:

Why do people focus so intently on the reason codes?  The important thing is the rejection, not the reason codes listed.  The reason codes are boilerplate written by lawyers and usually do not precisely fit your individual situation.

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Is this a serious question?  I pay attention to the reason codes associated with a rejection when I want to address the reasons for the negative answer, re-apply later, and have improved chances of getting a positive answer. 

Are the stated reasons always clear and logical?  Nope, but they're often better than nothing and sometimes they are quite helpful.

Want an example?  I asked BofA for a CLI recently.  They said no and gave me a list of reasons, the first of which was that it hadn't been long enough since my last CLI.  So, I waited until I hit the 6-month point and asked again and, voila!, $5k CLI. 

[AverageJoesCredit]

Best Synchrony denial is the blunt.....YOU ARE DENIED.... forget not having a mortgage,  thats cold in a world where its hard to read  sarcasm  online

[AverageJoesCredit]

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@UpperNwGuy wrote:

Why do people focus so intently on the reason codes?  The important thing is the rejection, not the reason codes listed.  The reason codes are boilerplate written by lawyers and usually do not precisely fit your individual situation.

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yeah im pretty jaded to denials now , get enough of them the reasons dont really matter.  .to me anyway