Ok, I have good credit and I would assume that it would be easy for me to get a credit card. Remember all though stories about people who used their pet’s name and ID (I wonder what SSN# they used!)? Well, those times are apparently not past. I just read a humorous account of a 6 year old who successfully received a credit card though he stated his true age, said he was not a home owner and had $0 income. I decided to check it out, by sacrificing my credit a little by adding inquires to my report and applying for a few cards to test the environment. (One note: I looked around and found an article from last year on how Bank of America is reducing credit card requirements. I guess they are still pretty relaxed. )  I didn’t apply to B of A since I already have a card with them.

If you look at the various offers out there on the internet, there are still supposedly “instant decision” offers, where you apply and Presto! you get your card in the mail. I applied for one card which had a 0% APR teaser rate for 12 months, no annual fee and offered 0% balance transfers. The balance transfers still had a 3% fee, though. (The card? HSBC). Yep, sure enough, I got an instant approval, and the card should be in the mail. One note on this application: there was a place to add an authorized user to the account, but not a joint user.

I looked around for another credit card which had a no balance transfer fee and found it: Simmons Bank. However, I went all the way through the application process and at the end, before hitting “Apply for this Card”, there was a note which said I had to send in all of my 1040s tax returns if self employed (that would be me) or W2s if not self employed. Say what? Wow, now those are tight requirements.

I noticed there were other credit cards with “instant approval” whose only requirements were “good credit”. Can we be more specific, people? I didn’t have a friend with “good credit” available to use as a guinea pig. However, in the days when my credit wasn’t so stellar, I had applied online for credit cards with “good credit” requirements and did not get the credit card teaser advertised, but one at a higher rate and lower balance limit. I wonder if that still applies.

What have you all encountered when applying for credit cards online?

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