If the two 2 ding's are paid, I would send GW letters to the OC to ask that the accounts be removed due to medical hardship and mention the payment to try to correct the wrong now that you are doing better. Remember to humbly ask and not demand, they are not legally required to remove the accounts. But if you request removal through GW letter many people have had success.
Your denial could have been from a number of factors I'm sure the 2 dings factored in but with the limited information provided, it is hard to say. But the denial letter will tell you why and give you a good starting point on what to work on to get approval in the future.
People tend to over-emphasize scores rather than the other information that can have a bigger impact on approvals. You mentioned your negatives, but what about your positives? What open accounts do you currently have and when were they opened?
You mentioned a new secured CC. If that is all you have open, then that is likely the issue as your existing credit is too new. Let it age to be at least 6 months with all positive history before trying again. Given your current scores, you don't need the small credit score bump you'd get for having 3 opened CCs. A second CC might be helpful, but you really don't need to get a sub-prime CC just to get one as you'll hate it in 6 to 9 months when you qualify for better. I think with your scores, if you had some positive history for awhile, you'd have no trouble getting a few good cards even with the negatives.
Store cards are easier to get but only specific ones, for example some store cards are Visa or MasterCard and can be used anywhere and are harder to get.
Your best bet for store cards right now based on age of your credit would to try the shopping cart trick cards “SCT”, search the forums and you’ll find topics on how to do this. The easiest is Victoria Secret, Wayfair, and/or quite a few others but there is a large list of Comenity cards that work with SCT and I’d advise doing that so you don’t take a hard hit for just getting an unsecured line of credit for a store card to establish a positive payment history.
Edit: Wanted to add a link with more info: https://www.doctorofcredit.com/shopping-cart-trick-get-credit-cards-without-the-hard-pull/
Your best bet for store cards right now based on age of your credit would to try the shopping cart trick cards “SCT”, search the forums and you’ll find topics on how to do this. The easiest is Victoria Secret, Wayfair, and/or quite a few others but there is a large list of Comenity cards that work with SCT and I’d advise doing that so you don’t take a hard hit for just getting an unsecured line of credit for a store card to establish a positive payment history.
Edit: Wanted to add a link with more info: https://www.doctorofcredit.com/shopping-cart-trick-get-credit-cards-without-the-hard-pull/
@Anonymouswrote:Do NOT do the SCT since it no longer works with soft pulls. Most of the time it will result in a hard pull on your Experian report. It's really not worth it just to get a store card with very limited use.
Joe I would disagree with your assessment, you do not have to click apply to get the popup for preapproval and 99.99% of the time if you get a pop-up saying you are preapproved you are approved. Do they pull your credit? Yes, but you will actually get a card. Versus hoping and praying or blind applying. The same could be said of any prequal from Capital One or any other major credit card, you can be prequal but they still pull your credit. The only difference is where with major credit cards you still have a good chance of being not qualified after receiving a prequal, with the SCT you are approved I've not heard of anyone getting the popup and not being approved. As far as the limited use arguement, I feel it is a horrible view with someone just starting to build their credit.
If they shop a lot at the retailer the discounts could help them save money, and help their credit. How you ask? While the card may start with low CL, on store cards the CLI's come rather quickly and for example with Victoria Secret I've seen cards with over $20,000 in CL. If you show you can use and manage a store card it does carry weight. It can also help keep your utilization low. The only negative is it'll lower the AAoA, however with the OP's AAoA already low as they are just now building credit I don't see how it would hurt them at this time. But that's my thoughts.