Apply Card Chase Credit, how to do?
In September I got one of those fabulous low interest rate credit card
offers in the mail. Chase Manhattan wanted to lure me away from other
credit card companies by offering to transfer balances at a fabulous rate.
I believe it was 6.9%. I have a perfect impeccable credit rating -- 23 years
of on time payments. I applied for the offer and when a month went by with
no reponse, I called Chase to find out what was going on. I was told by
a person in the credit department that I was turned down due to having
access to too much credit and because of a blemish on my credit report
involving SEARS. I called again and talked to a different employee just
to make sure the SEARS story was correct and got the same answer. The credit
reporting agency was TRW they said. I ordered my credit report from TRW and f
ound out that there was no problem with SEARS. Chase Manhattan Bank lied!
Keep in mind that I already have a different line-of-credit with Chase
Manhattan Bank and have never failed to pay. So, I wrote a letter to the
president and he passed the buck to some low life correspondence manager
who couldn't even spell my name right. I get a letter back with no apology
and just more banking rhetoric about how they apply their credit criteria
uniformly so they are fair to all applicants.
The morrow of this story is this:
1. Don't bother applying if you spent years building your credit rating
and therefore have access to lots of credit. They hold it against
you EVEN if you don't use it.
2. Pray that your creditors report to the credit bureau when your
past accounts are closed, because Chase will consider them to be open
and use it against your application as having access to too much credit.
3. Don't be a business owner and apply for a Chase credit card because most
business owners have higher debts and this will be considered too much.
Chase Manhattan is too simple minded to handle the idea that some
consumers are business people and deserve exceptions to the rule.
They insist that ALL applications must meet the same criteria.
4. Even if you make your payments on time and have impeccable credit, any
of the 3 above criteria will cause a rejection.
5. Even though they offer to transfer your balances, they still insist that
you are getting additional credit and thereby contradict the purpose as
to why they solicited your business in the first place.
6. If you apply for their credit card, you may get rejected without notice
and if you ask why, you might be lied too.
Last, don't even bother applying for a Chase Manhattan credit card. They
advertise on television and by mail, but seem to be looking for someone who
doesn't have much credit --- even though they want a good credit rating.
There are far too many credit card offers you can apply for rather then
messing with Chase Manhattan. Who needs this grief?? Nobody!
This is something you can do something about instead of just whine
about it... I've requested creditors to contact credit reporting
agencies to indicate closure of account by customer request, with some
(not complete) success.
No matter what the policy is, some people are going to be displeased.
If they apply their credit rules uniformly, people like you complain
that you're special in some way and therefore ought to be exempted
from the rules. If they allow for all sorts of special exemptions,
then other people will complain that they discriminate against groups
X, Y, and Z. Chase made their decision. You don't have to be
stupidly sarcastic about it.
Impeccable credit by *YOUR* criteria. Should banks have to judge
everybody's credit records by criteria which they want the banks to use?
I offer a counter-example experience. I applied for a Chase Manhattan
Visa with approximately zero credit history, was accepted, and have
received good customer service in the last 5 years when I have had the
need to contact them about problems with merchants.