It's now been over 6 months since our discharge (a bit more, but I've been busy with the holidays) and time to check credit reports and sort through the card offers I've received.
The good news - I've been saving the offers I get in the mail, and found one with no annual fee (high interest, but I won't carry a balance so no big deal). Capital One approved me immediately online, and I should have my card in 7-10 days. Hurrah for easy credit - I'm amazed that they've already forgotten the thousands of their dollars that were included in my bankruptcy. I don't care if the credit limit is only $100, I'll only be using it to build credit and not for regular purchases.
Side note - I think this is a result of the CARD act that was passed this year. All of the credit card offers had an easily understood chart that showed the various interest rates (standard rate, penalty rate, cash advance rate, initial offer rate) and fees (overlimit, past due, etc) so I could easily compare offers. That was pretty nice. I'm about 7 months post-bankruptcy, with two student loans and a car loan still reporting pays-as-agreed, and the offers ranged from 12.9 variable APR to 24.9 variable, some with 0% initial offers. I'm surprised at those offers, I figured the interest rates would be higher and was surprised to find one without an annual fee.
I went to get my free credit reports online from annualcreditreport.com. Apparently I got the reports from two CRAs back in February (forgot about that) so I only got Equifax today. Most of my accounts are reporting correctly - included in bankruptcy, pays as agreed, etc. Bank of America shows one account as charged off (with a date after the bankruptcy case was filed), so I went to dispute it.
To dispute an account, you have to:
-go to a different website
-fill in all of your info a second time and create a password (with all kinds of requirements about special characters)
-wait for the confirmation email to arrive (15 minutes), but not longer than 2 days (since your account expires after 2 days)
-sign back in with your password
-fill in all of your info (SS#, address, name, etc) a third time
-provide the account number and information for the account - the full account number isn't specified on the credit report, so I hope they can deal with the last 4 digits being X.
-wait 45 days for a response to come in the mail
All of this just to file the dispute - now we see how much they fight me on actually changing the information. Really, this is ridiculous.
I'm glad to finally be moving forward!
The good news - I've been saving the offers I get in the mail, and found one with no annual fee (high interest, but I won't carry a balance so no big deal). Capital One approved me immediately online, and I should have my card in 7-10 days. Hurrah for easy credit - I'm amazed that they've already forgotten the thousands of their dollars that were included in my bankruptcy. I don't care if the credit limit is only $100, I'll only be using it to build credit and not for regular purchases.
Side note - I think this is a result of the CARD act that was passed this year. All of the credit card offers had an easily understood chart that showed the various interest rates (standard rate, penalty rate, cash advance rate, initial offer rate) and fees (overlimit, past due, etc) so I could easily compare offers. That was pretty nice. I'm about 7 months post-bankruptcy, with two student loans and a car loan still reporting pays-as-agreed, and the offers ranged from 12.9 variable APR to 24.9 variable, some with 0% initial offers. I'm surprised at those offers, I figured the interest rates would be higher and was surprised to find one without an annual fee.
I went to get my free credit reports online from annualcreditreport.com. Apparently I got the reports from two CRAs back in February (forgot about that) so I only got Equifax today. Most of my accounts are reporting correctly - included in bankruptcy, pays as agreed, etc. Bank of America shows one account as charged off (with a date after the bankruptcy case was filed), so I went to dispute it.
To dispute an account, you have to:
-go to a different website
-fill in all of your info a second time and create a password (with all kinds of requirements about special characters)
-wait for the confirmation email to arrive (15 minutes), but not longer than 2 days (since your account expires after 2 days)
-sign back in with your password
-fill in all of your info (SS#, address, name, etc) a third time
-provide the account number and information for the account - the full account number isn't specified on the credit report, so I hope they can deal with the last 4 digits being X.
-wait 45 days for a response to come in the mail
All of this just to file the dispute - now we see how much they fight me on actually changing the information. Really, this is ridiculous.
I'm glad to finally be moving forward!
Bankruptcy Wizard
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