Petal Credit Card does a HARD PULL (not soft pull like they advertise)

[Anonymous]

Hey guys, 

I just saw an ad for the Petal card floating by on Facebook, it's supposed to be a way to rebuild credit.  It's a card that takes your bank account and credit card history into account when making a decision on if to give you a new Tradeline or not, and gives you a reasonable Credit Limit of over $1000, supposedly between $1000 and $2000 instead of a lowbie amount of $300 or so.  You can get it with Bad Credit.  There are no fees.  BUT - you can't get any Rewards either.  (my credit is now in the low part of the "good" category, BUT I thought this would be an easy way for me to gain a couple thousand more of avaialble credit like shooting fish in a barrel.  But it's almost never That Easy, guys)

One of the big selling points was that this card only gives you a Soft Pull in order to gain it.  It sounded pretty good to me - Soft Pull, High Credit Limit - I want to increase the amount of my avaialable credit and did not want to use the My Jewelers trick and others like that, to be forced to buy cheezy jewelry or high priced junky electronics as a way to churn those crazy cards to generate points.  So I applied for it.

The truth is, they are LYING about the Soft Pull - at the end of the application, you are advised that it will in fact do a Hard Pull of your credit.  I had to think about it for a minute because I JUST did a Hard Pull in order to roll my Skypass Visa from a Secured over into an Unsecured card, so this would be my second Hard Pull in a month.  I decided to just go for it due to the lure of the high credit limit increase.  So, I clicked the button.  But then, I got an Error message on my application saying that there was "something wrong" with my application and to contact Support.  I tried to talk to someone on the phone and they referred me to their Email Support.  So that's where it stands now - I have to wait to be emailed back to even see if I was able to apply or not.  That's pretty ghetto, but I'm going to at least follow up to see if I was able to gain this trade line.  Something tells me it's just not going to be as easy as 1-2-3 to gain a new tradeline of $1000 or more with no fees.  

I just thought I would warn all of you Credit Builders about the Hard Pull and the cheezy application and inability of the Support Team to access the application records, and the throwing of the customer onto the email support.  It's all pretty bad, but I guess these are the things you have to go to till you finally break through into the upper realms of the Credit World (omg)

[Anonymous]

Did you read the FAQ?

Will applying to Petal affect my credit score?

During Pre-Approval: The pre-approval step is the first part of the application during which you submit your information and connect your banks. We only perform a soft pull during the pre-approval process, which won't affect your credit score.

When Submitting Your Application: If you're pre-approved, you'll be invited to submit your full application for Petal. At this point, we’ll do a hard inquiry (or hard pull) which will show up on your credit report. This could affect your credit score, but in most cases, it has a small impact or no impact at all.

[Anonymous]

Sadly, no, I did not read it.  A big deal was made about the Soft Pull in the advertisement and I took them at their word - mistake, I am aware of that.  They do in fact notify you about the Hard Pull at the end of the application process, so it's not like they don't tell you.  But I never would have browsed them if I did not see the words "soft pull" in the original advertisement.  So I thought I'd make us aware of that.  They get you when they are just floating through your social media feed, for me it was late at night and I was vulnerable through fatigue of falling for this advertisement.

I still think this might be a better alternative to plump up the amount of available credit without dealing with My Jewlers, etc.  It's actual credit and not a store card, as well.