After many months of junk mail from Capital one offering prescreened Visa credit card, I decided to accept their offer.
The reason being it was an offer of 2.99% fixed interest for a year, then drops to 1.99% for the life of any balance transfers from higher interest credit cards.
I have two other Visa cards in good standing but higher interest rates. My thoughts were to transfer all balances to one card and cancel the higher intrest card.
I was turned down for this prescreened card for 4 reasons even though my credit report came back as excellent with all closed accounts marked as paid/never late and 3 department stores as inactive (over 3 years) paid/never late. This report go's back as far as 1990 on accounts closed/paid/never late.in fact one of the closed/paid / never late was a Capital one card I closed in 2002.
Capital one said:
1. Amount of loan payments too high in relation to income. I have set my income at $22000.00 per year. This is Social Security plus drawing out of my 401 retirement account. I could have set my income thousands a year higher but no need.
My loan payments that are too high consists of other than my two Visa card are a $440.00 a month mortgage and $50 to $70 a month Gas card that carries no balance. The Visa cards carry a min payment of $100.00 for the both of them.
2. Credit amount of mortgage is too high. Huh? I placed a $40,000 mortgage on my home 13 years ago, now owe $9,000.00 and will be paid off in 2 years.
3. Too many auto finance trades on file. This one gets me! I have financed 4 autos in the last 15 years for myself and kids. The last one being a new '99 Mustang that was paid off in November. All show accounts closed/paid/never late. I have no auto payments at this time.
4. The total balance of bankcard amounts too close to total limits of accounts. BULL! Two cards, one with a credit limit of $14K has $1K on it, the other has $8K limit and $5K balance.
That's $6k on a $22K limit. I could pay these off out of my retirement funds but the interest income is better than the interest rates I pay.
Bottom line is, I'm retired and use the cards to buy old tractors, overhaul them, new tires and etc. That's the reason I have a balance on them in the first place.
Excellent credit and denied so it must be because I'm retired.
I'm only writing this because they came to me with preapproval many times and when I accept, they disapprove me. Don't waste your time on the b*tards, I sure won't again.
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